Daughters Of The Moon Poem by gershon hepner

DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON


In “Daughters of the Moon, ”
the moon falls to the earth,
and ends up very soon
where there's not a dearth
of ladies in a park
who, working with a spanner,
dance, nakedly quite stark
each one of them Diana,
abandoned dancing
among abandoned cars,
which I find as entrancing
as Venus is to Mars.

Joseph Farrell reviews Italo Calvino’s “The Complete Cosmicomics, ” translated by William Weaver, Tim Parks and Martin L. McLaughlin in the TLS, July 3,2009:

The later cosmicomic tales deal with days nearer our own times, and with people who live in places like New Jersey and drive cars, rather than plod over uncharted areas of the cosmos. It is possible to detect a darker side in the last stories. IN “Daughters of the Moon”, the moon falls to the earth, as in one of Leopardi’s poems, but this time it is in New York, and the moon ends up in a scrapyard with abandoned cars, to be greeted by a group of naked New York maidens, all called Diana. The scrapyard is as central as the burnt-out moon, and the tale is a protest against futile consumerism as well as a work of fantasy.


7/11/09