Lunar Looks Poem by Ananta Madhavan

Last night the full moon shone effulgent, a silvered plate,
Neither sphere nor rotund globe. The moon, our satellite,
Lacks our earthly faculty to revolve in orbit:
A prudent and calculable habit.

The moon sometimes puts on a ruddy face
With mocking looks or sarcastic grimace.
Sometimes it seems to frown, as if to reprimand
The antics of a rabid mob in a lawless land.

Kids are not deceived by fairy tales and rhymes
About ‘a man in the moon' in olden times.
But Space Age spawns new fictions, plausible,
Discoveries that now seem incredible.

The moon shows the same visage to us,
Being in ‘synchronous rotation' with the earth.
We know it has its fortnightly phases,
Crescents, boats, shapes like segments of cheese.

One night at three, I rose and groped around
My dark bedroom and stood spell-bound
By moonlit oblongs on the floor, all askew.
It was our satellite departing from the sky we knew.

At dawn I found the moon had lingered still,
As if to greet the sun as it came onstage over hill,
Sharing the firmament at dawn. There is space enough
For variants and phases, though life is tough.

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