Malade - Free Audiobook

BROTHER AND SISTER

THE shorn moon trembling indistinct on her path,
     Frail as a scar upon the pale blue sky,
     Draws towards the downward slope; some sorrow
          hath
     Worn her down to the quick, so she faintly fares
     Along her foot-searched way without knowing why
     She creeps persistent down the sky's long stairs.

     Some say they see, though I have never seen,
     The dead moon heaped within the new moon's arms;
     For surely the fragile, fine young thing had been
     Too heavily burdened to mount the heavens so.
     But my heart stands still, as a new, strong dread
          alarms
     Me; might a young girl be heaped with such shadow
          of woe?

     Since Death from the mother moon has pared us
          down to the quick,
     And cast us forth like shorn, thin moons, to travel
     An uncharted way among the myriad thick
     Strewn stars of silent people, and luminous litter
     Of lives which sorrows like mischievous dark mice
          chavel
     To nought, diminishing each star's glitter,

     Since Death has delivered us utterly, naked and
          white,
     Since the month of childhood is over, and we stand
          alone,
     Since the beloved, faded moon that set us alight
     Is delivered from us and pays no heed though we
          moan
     In sorrow, since we stand in bewilderment, strange
     And fearful to sally forth down the sky's long range.

     We may not cry to her still to sustain us here,
     We may not hold her shadow back from the dark.
     Oh, let us here forget, let us take the sheer
     Unknown that lies before us, bearing the ark
     Of the covenant onwards where she cannot go.
     Let us rise and leave her now, she will never know.