Eye Test
“Quite good at moon, especially when it’s full”
I boast by text message, as though the moon’s
a new phase in my history.
My friend has asked if I can see its shape
in the bright dusk. Which image does she want?
A lump of rock? A leaping lunar hare?
Face? Crescent? A leech lifting
light from the sun? I can’t say “Zilch”
or that the only Moon I’m certain of
is a sort of Braille, and as I can’t read
the sky at night the moon is a guessed space
where I am free to put whatever.
I suppose I could blame the weather
but I still hope to see the official moon
above rush hour. I respond
as though to an ophthalmologist
with a box of silver lenses,
whose job it is to clarify my dark
and gauge the exact colour of my blackness.
'Eye Test' First published in Jacket2 (2012). Reprinted by kind permission of the author.
“Quite good at moon, especially when it’s full”
I boast by text message, as though the moon’s
a new phase in my history.
My friend has asked if I can see its shape
in the bright dusk. Which image does she want?
A lump of rock? A leaping lunar hare?
Face? Crescent? A leech lifting
light from the sun? I can’t say “Zilch”
or that the only Moon I’m certain of
is a sort of Braille, and as I can’t read
the sky at night the moon is a guessed space
where I am free to put whatever.
I suppose I could blame the weather
but I still hope to see the official moon
above rush hour. I respond
as though to an ophthalmologist
with a box of silver lenses,
whose job it is to clarify my dark
and gauge the exact colour of my blackness.
'Eye Test' First published in Jacket2 (2012). Reprinted by kind permission of the author.
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Nuala Watt and Samuel Tongue talk as part of a podcast recorded at the StAnza.
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