The Moon - an excerpt
“The Moon” is an excerpt from Our Moon Poem: A Radio Novel, a graphic/audio novel about the Apollo 11 moon landing and American myth making. This chapter is from the Moon’s point of view, and the audio is read by Maria Tomasula.
I felt your touch with an ache in my heart—to use your words, not mine. For though we both contain multitudes, your words are what matter most. I know because for millennia, I have gazed down upon you and your curious creatures with as much wonder as you have looked up at me, nay, more, since I have been looking down upon you long before you ever thought to look up, long before that part of you crawled out of your slime, even before slime thickened into the life you became. Yea, for millions of years, I looked down longingly, as lovers do, yearning to be one, since, as you must know, we were, indeed one, long ago, a cosmic collision cleaving us, and leaving us needing the other to be whole, which is why I am as attracted to you as you are to me. This longing grew as you etamorphosed into a lush globe while I faded to the color of bone, a skull in your sky. Yes, it’s true, though we are the same age, one wouldn’t know it: I grew cold and distant while you seemed to ever renew. Still, this did not diminish your love for me. Nor mine for you. Though the collision that drove us apart set you wildly spinning, my persistent longing slowed your days and nights to a length suitable for being and I watched in fascination as your seasonal patterns fell into noble succession. Billions of nights gave way to days, gave way to nights, as you saw me rise, then set, though to me you are a blue marble perpetually pinned to the same spot in my starry sky. Your seas rose up as I passed over them, straining to press against my breast; your seas would have followed me all around the world if not for your shores, the tides that rose then fell, the cells that began to pulse, the night flowers that opened, the oysters that closed at my passing; your yearning eventually moved out of your seas, the rhythm of your heart passing from species to species, the spawning of fish, the migration of birds, the cant of nerves, the catch of breath….
Yes, I was there, we were there, in your mating, your sleeping and waking; I was deep in your being even as you began to forget that we were once one and no longer recognized my face as your own. You sighed, guided by my pale light to other loves; you arranged massive stones in monumental circles to anticipate my coming, trembled in fear when I ate the sun, and built pyramids to me, your platinum deity. As it turned out, there was some truth in your belief that I was the lowest sphere of heaven, so near that I could almost be touched by saints standing on your highest peak even if your first and most persistent name for me meant ‘a place impossible to reach.’ Inconstant lover, you sometimes imagined me a stern father, or a serene mother with shooting stars as tears. You thought I was made of ice. Though I shared a name with the blood of women, you blamed me for your martial passions, said I curdled milk, clouded diamonds, and was the best friend of grave robbers. The sun was the eye of a powerful god, some said, I, its more understanding companion. Or Orion’s shield. Store house of dreams. Or the ferry of departed souls, slowly setting out across the great abyss of the night as the sun descended into its cave. I communed with the owl, released the bats, and spoke to hunters. And the hunted, too. I inspired crickets, not just poets, reflecting off the dark waters of unknown pools, illuminating the contemplative life of fish. Witches harvested weeds in my shadow. Wolves sang to me. My reddening brought on madness—lunatics, you christened them—and foretold the death of kings. Strange mystery, I, a pearl mirrored in a single drop of dew—or millions—able to move both seas and spirits, I whose soft light has delighted in your rapture but also kept company with your sorrow….
Now the sorrow’s mine. For I see that longing can only be for a thing not had. Had I been honest with myself, I would have feared the coming of this day: it wasn’t wonder that inspired you to put me to use, to light your attacks, lift your ships. It wasn’t the love of my pale mystery that made you begin to shine back, first in patches, but, I’d thought—so, okay, call me romantic—you had a luminous color not so different from my own. I’m coming, that white glow said. Watching it grow harsh and spread like a rash, I should have known that you’d meant less as a lover than one with force.
Now you’re here. And I feel an anatomist in your metallic touch. The price?—Remember: mountains silhouetted against my rising face; my serenity silvering rippled waves as you stood alone on a shore; that bench in the garden where we first met; yew trees and blue-black lawns on gentle summer nights; my cold, brilliant shine in winter; remember when I could be a gray sliver in your sky, nearly impossible to discern; or a crescent as yellow as an old hound’s tooth? Remember how I filled your sky on a harvest night?... Never will we be the same, and I wonder what you’ll see after you leave, and then look back.
Beep [Apollo kindar tone]