Darlings, I write to you from the moon
where I hide behind famous light.
How could you ever think it was a man up here?
A cow jumped over. The dish ran away with
the spoon. What reached me were your joys, griefs,
here’s-the-craic, losses, longings, your lives
brief, mine long, a talented loneliness. I must have
a thousand names for the earth, my blue vocation.
Round I go, the moon a diet of light, sliver of pear,
wedge of lemon, slice of melon, half an orange,
silver onion; your human sound falling through space,
childbirth’s song, the lover’s song, the song of death.
Devoted as words to things, I gaze, gawp, glare; deserts
were forests were, sick seas. When night comes,
I see you gaping back as though you hear my Darlings,
what have you done, what have you done to the world?
~ from The Bees (Picador, 2011)
