1.
On the
twenty-third of June in the year
Two thousand
and thirteen, sudden motion
Was detected
on the surface of the
Moon. By
November ninth it was clear that
We were not
alone and had not been lost
On the move.
The mosque on the moon confirmed
All of that.
We had just not been listening.
Glistening
glint, the hint of light was what
Our
telescopic eyes could see, but not
Microphonic,
our ears were the problem.
The call had
been made for millions of years.
We now know
that the first movement was a
Momentary
anomaly, a flick
Of a foot by
a member of the faith.
But the heads
had been touched to the prayer rugs
By the
faithful many millennia.
The backs had
been arched over eons of
Time. The
marble colonnaded courtyard
Had been still,
and the pigeons had roosted
On edges of
the enclosure, and all
In grey and
white shades were invisible.
So minarets
had seemed like mountainous
Pillars on
the edges of craters on
The surface
of the moon. And the backs of
The
worshippers like greyed-over moonrocks,
But more to
the fact, when not expected,
The eyes of
man had not been trained, and ears
Most
certainly had been blocked many years.
- - - - - - -
2.
That first
movement disturbed the prayer of time.
The birds
were sent wheeling in unison.
Dozens of
shapes swept like shifting saccades.
One in its
wingshape seemed like the foreground,
Its wings
angled upward like the crescent
Of the
sphere, and the observer on Earth
Saw it was a
sign, when the sound was heard.
Only he knew
the sign came before sound.
For all
others the sound filled the air, and
Ears everywhere
knew the tune of the moon.
The muezzin was calling from the high
Minaret, from
the roof of the world, as
The prophet
of the seventh century
Had called
for, and prophets before as well.
That the
sound came with the sign was a great
Mystery. Only
homo sapiens
Had been deaf
to the call. In milky sea
The Earthship
would list, lenses of ocean
Pulled by the
tide, like two ears on the sphere
Of a mother’s
round face, or two whites to
The sides of
an iris, waters displaced.
In the mosque
on the moon, no eyes had been
Turned to the
blue and green jewel on the sea.
For the moon
is the unborn sister of
Earth, the
caul of its fortunes hiding from
Sight the
footprints on Earth, til the turn of
Fate in ’69,
a Yin-Yang of signs,
Left a
footprint of man on its shoreline.
- - - - - - - -
3.
Wherefore forty-four
years man’s eyes had been
Blinded when
the eye of the moon had been
Opened. A
mould was made of the mark of
Man, and
placed in the mihrab built in the
Wall where
the worshippers faced to pray to
The Source,
to reinforce their one focus,
Knowing then
that man could not hear at all.
All the
creatures of Earth had always heard
The sound, the
call to come to the prayer hall.
To the music
of the spheres had their ears
All attended,
to one hundred thousand
Million stars
in an ocean of milk
One hundred
thousand light years across in
A jug, crescent
moon the lip of the spout.
The whales in
their sounds in the singular
Water,
ululations fluctuating
In the
subsidence of tidal movements,
Knew the tune
cast on the nighttime moonbeams.
And newborn
foals too cocooned in their stalls
Felt
reassured by the muezzin’s call,
And heard
fully the extent of his song.
But for the
humans who thought that the moon
Was a place,
and not a portal or veil,
A speaker
cone thrumming with the rhythm
Of space, a round
music box wound with the
Thread of
time, a skein of wool spooled on a
Bright bobbin
in the mind, in memory
And
imagination, analogy
And rhyme,
the moon was indeed a dry place.
- - - - - -
4.
And so the
moon was marked with man’s feet, a
Feat of
literal comprehension, to
Knock on the
dry wall of a deserted
Village in
the heat of the desert, and
Not realize,
that within the blank walls,
Had they
arrived a little later, would
Be a welcome
and water from the well.
Typical of
the building traditions
Of the desert
regions of the Earth, the
Mosque on the
moon was featureless from the
Outside. The
dust of the dunes covered
Man’s feet,
mariners marooned on the moon,
lunatics lost
from the loom, a balloon
That sailed
off into space without a clue.
When the muezzin’s call was heard at first,
A madness
entered the Earth, for the sound
Was merely a
monotone, a drone just
Past mute, a
low mellow toll of hollow
Bell, more a murmuring from a deep
sleep,
Mutterings
from the other half of the
Brain, a call
‘cross the corpus callosum.
Only the
mystics heard the true sound, and
Communed with
the mosque’s moguls and mullahs,
The imams and moolvis and African
Moors on their
mosaic-paved paths on the
Moon. In the
monastery of Mont St.
Michel, the
monks there knew only too well
What it was
like to be isolated.
- - - - - -
5.
In silences
the monks meditated
In their
cells like bivalve molluscs that strained
The sea of sound
for meaning, til all was
Quiet and yet
was heard the muezzin’s
Call as
feeling, and a sense of inner
Movement, as
though a mushroom were forming
Under the
earth, and soon to be revealed.
The sadhus in
the Himalayas were
Likewise
occupied, as they rode the tide
Of sound from
the meniscus of the moon
To full, and heard
the pull like an oar through
The foam,
like the spores in the loam, like a
Scythe as it
sweeps through the field in the late
Afternoon, in
their tympanum eardrums.
The artists and mooncalves and usual
Fools of
society also grew still,
And stayed in
their rooms and wound down to a
Pause, stowed
in the shadows, and slowed to a
Crawl, and
grew their antennae like moths in
The dark, and
so heard all the goings-on
Relayed from
the moon’s white radio disc.
In such ways
for some the sickle moon sang
Like a
venetian blind hung, turned from the
Sun. Or with
curved blades bent flat, tuned to a
Varying degree such that that was the
Waxing and waning of feelings and
sound,
Until moonlight was spilled on
windowsills
Inside, and they walked and talked
on the moon.
- - - - - -
6.
But those in
the citadels of reason,
Shrouded in
science and shored up against
Nature, only
heard the tinnitus tone,
A ringing, an
unanswered telephone
Reverberating
in their craniums,
Machine-like
titanium singeing
Nerve endings
never sending along song.
Not for them
was the white geranium
Of the moon
blossomed in the woad blue sky,
But like a
coin tossed, lost on dark pavement
Jealously
possessed, a dollar, money,
Moolah, Moloch addressed, obsessed over
If it seemed
that some other nation was
Mining on it
with machines on the sly.
Or worse, if
some alien entity
Had designs
on the pride of the father,
And had
thought they could take the dowry
Of the moon,
and via the bride, spy on
The Earth,
the groom of the moon and charge of
The
paternalistic tribe of elders,
Monopolistic
monarchs of Terra.
Training
their telescopes further, they saw
Not a whit of
the mosque, but straining with
Unbridled
fervour, only saw more of
The feathers
tempest-tossed, but witnessed as
A molecular
disturbance, motion
Like snow in
a blizzard of moondust so
They thought,
not having eyes to see clearer.
- - - - - -
7.
With dry eyes
and dry minds they saw moondust,
Like
pockmarks on the Mona Lisa’s face.
They saw not
the gaze of the mother-of-
Pearl-lustred
sister of Earth, a goddess
Like she,
twin at the birth but covered in
Night and
unborn to the days of the Sun,
But festooned
in her changes like moonstone.
They knew not
the silvery spoon, dipped in
The soup bowl
of sparkling sesame
Oil drops
floating on dark miso soup,
The bleached
wood wine cork bobbing on the sea
Under
atmospheric mists amid waves
Of stellar
cosmic rays, a pale doorknob
Opening to
the landscape of nightfall.
They had not
halved the feijoa moonfruit,
With the cool
taste like the grapes from Bordeaux.
Or drunk
lemonade in a tall glass in
The shade of
a beach umbrella by a
Sparkling
ocean. The moon is a shell
Caught in
swollen swell of tidal motion,
Calciferous
iridescent omen.
The milk
teeth of the moon leave only a
Temporary
bitemark on the passage
Of time. When
full, her mouth is a moue of
Pout til the
nipple is out again and
Fed, she
sleeps once more, round belly growing
Smaller and
turning into the blanket
Of night,
grows hungry in her dreaming head.
- - - - - -
8.
Well, the
merchants of enterprise chimed in,
And said
expedition to the moon was
Timely, to
determine the source of the
Sound. So
with consummate skill they designed
A great
vessel, a double-hulled schooner
Hung from a
dirigible, an airship
Of technical
splendour, Gondola One.
It set sail
on the solar wind, ‘cross the
Swale of sky,
like a coracle on the
Sea caulked
watertight with oakum,
Anchor rope
freed from the bollard of Earth,
From its mooring,
and cast to the shivering
Stars, a
glissade of light like the passage
Of past ships
sailing the Straits of Dover.
Large lateen
sails, slung fore and aft from the
Mastheads on
loose-fitted booms, could accept
The solar
wind on either side, and thus
With the
voyage timed close to an eclipse,
The clipper spaceship
tacked to and fro through
The tidal
zone between the two planets,
A boat floating
on the moat of the moon.
In its hubris
it mimicked the moon phases,
With white
robes of gossamer cobweb sails
billowing from
sickle to albescent
Fullness,
like the embroidered handkerchiefs
Of morris dancers
flicked on the wind or,
Weighted with
beads, placed over the rims of
Wooden milk pails
pooled brimful with liquid.
- - - - - -
9.
Across the
gulf of space, with the faint stars
Twinkling in
their masses like milk sprinkled
On a bowl of
black molasses, the bow
Of the
zeppelin gondola ship sailed,
The long guyropes
holding like a hand on
The pommel of
a saddle steadying
Its course, the
inky sea an ambling horse.
In the
distance the moon loomed, murmuring
With the
sound waves of the muezzin’s call
That emanated
from craters deep in
The Sea of Serenity,
formed over
Three
thousand million years ago, by
Meteorites
causing lava to flow,
Making the maria, the dark hollows.
Apollo never
discovered the mosque.
Eleven landed
on Tranquillity,
And Seventeen on Serenity, but
Even with
this last mission, the result
Eventually on
Earth, was that none
Heard much of
anything, and never learned
That the moon
was in truth a tambourine.
The moon was
made out a monument of
Dust, a dowdy
doppelgänger, a dry
Crust in a
petri dish riddled with mould,
A millstone
grinding the husks of science,
While the
mass media relayed only
Talcum powder
and dandruff to the young
And the old,
and calcium for your bones.
- - - - - -
10.
As scientists
pored over dry moon rocks
From the
solar Apollo moon missions,
And telescoped
into the empty eye
Sockets of
the maria craters in
Porous skull
bone of their own mongrel moon,
The Gondola
One seafaring crew fell
Into orbit to
circle la Luna.
And mutatis mutandis, the sound of
The
shimmering, tremulous gong of the
Moon underwent
a sea change, as a sine
Wave
vibration lifted it into a
Modulating melodious
music
And even an incantation,
as the
Muezzin’s voice of the Muse was now heard.
The starship passed
over the mountainous
Moonscape
below, and the maria were
Arrayed like
a montage of photos in
A row, the
thickness between crust and the
Mantle of the
moon, Mohorovičić
Discontinuity-like
in thickness,
Thinnest
where the ancient lava had flowed.
And it was as
if the whole planet played
In a moderato tempo, with a
Mutable mellifluous
melody
Swimming
among the multiform moonrock
Like a
meandering minnow below,
The moiré
ripples of sound moistening
The moon’s dry
atmosphere like monsoon rains.
- - - - - - -
11.
The
Mandelbrot set of overlapping
Craters were mandalas
of mantra, a
Plangent
pattern of plate tectonics, a
Vibraphone or
Moog synthesizer, a
Resonating drum
kit of cymbals and
Symbols, like
that of the surface of a
Pond suffused
with syncopating raindrops.
The galleon gull
of Gondola One
Sailed an
elliptical path, over the
Artemesian satellite
of Earth,
And felt the symphonious
current
Reverberate
in its hull, sharp-ridged keel,
Rudder and
tiller, and wheel in the bridge,
And the
magnetic coils of its turbines.
Now the
albatross wings of its mainsails
Lifted the
vessel to the height of the
Apocynthion, furthest
point from the
Moon below,
and over the edge of the
Curved horizon
darkness grew, and thus swooped
Into deep dark
lunar side, the diving
Almond
mandorla vesica pisces.
A manhole
cover slipped over the night,
The moon a
dark bubble under sea, the
Monkshood
wolfsbane octopus tentacle
Sucker surrounding
and suffocating
Its prey, the
sound now muffled suffering
Catacoustically,
and crew onboard
In a form of forgetfulness
trauma.
- - - - - -
12.
Cuticle of light, melt of butter on
Toast, a shoal of quick fishscales flashing in
Slant of sunbeam. A luminous hoop of
Lunisolar light tipped over the ship’s
Proscenium deck. And muffled bassoon
Turned mandolin, chimes and bodhrán again
In the flashbulb of the full melon moon.
Farinaceous host set in silver
Monstrance illuminated in a
Glass lunette, was raised by a priest dressed in
Black cassock, not moth-proofed such that the stars
Shone through. Rosary beads of nebulae
Glowed in curlicues, as the roaming craft
Of Gondola One reached its rendezvous.
Boosters flared, the windjammer’s momentum
Was moderated, and many miles the
Fair airship descended, til into a
Synchronous orbit it fell, above a
Floury flocculent ice-floe lagoon at
The edge of the Sea of Serenity,
Like flotsam floating above the seafloor.
Zoom lenses would see the mote in the eye,
Speck of metal, wood and muslin. Minute
Matchwood masts in a microgroove of space,
Zooplankton organisms in a vast
Watery waste, grains of pollen strewn by
The wind, while the Muslim muezzin’s call
Anchored them all, a harmonic harpoon.
- - - - - -
13.
Out in the boondocks of the galactic
Hinterland, the Gondola cosmonauts
On the observation deck scanned their eyes
Through the vacuum, looking for the source of
The euphonious sound – and the lustrous,
Gilded, turquoise and eggshell-blue tiles of
The golden mosque’s great onion dome answered.
The geometry and mosaics of
The iris of the dome were plumage of
Peacocks in opalescent polychrome
Arabesques of ornate decoration,
Calligraphic swirls and interlaced vines,
Fractal-like tendrils in elemental
Motifs with endless knot scrolling entwined.
The stationary crew fell into a
Swoon, realization rolling over them.
How jejune their mentation not to see
The moon was a convex mirror, onion
Dome pearl the microcosmic blue-green Earth,
And the calling, the reflected crying
For the moon of Earth’s inhabitants’ dreams.
The mosque on the moon has a cinnamon
Tree where all creatures go to pray, fed by
A gourd of water from Lourdes, memory,
Emotion, imagination, wonder,
Mystery and mood, liminal light and
Noosphere loosened in pungency, moon a
Corm storing water, fortune and story.
- - - - - -
© Tony French
Winter Solstice
Full Moon 2013
