Luna Poem by Sherwin Balbuena

Brighter than the most powerful star
At this time of the clone of the day -
The night in which children want to play
On streets where nothing would ever mar
The excitement in patintero*.
Your borrowed light keeps them stop and go.

Your being's mystified all the world
Since humans began to ask questions.
They each had contrasting conclusions
About what you are made of and hold:
For a blurry eye, you were a star;
Curiosity sees plainly the far.

'Til some laws speak of you and the tide,
The amount of bleeding of a wound,
The Earth's sun-centered merry-go-round,
An all the principles you abide.
Silent are they in the woman's womb
And about how the hill's spring could climb.

Dexterity let the rockets fly
And told them to land on your surface,
Leaving footprints nothing can erase
But the wind of doubt and rain of lie.
They should have carried a long, long strand
And left the one end where I stand.

Your shape is malleable to sunlight
And the place in the path that you take -
New, quarters, full for calendar's sake.
Your absence is a meaningless night
For an artist wanting your crescent
In his oeuvre with a black content.

At times you affront the Sun you owe
The magnificence you have at night;
At solar eclipse you seem to fight
Or, like a large serpent, to swallow
The burning and benevolent Sun.
A pagan would loudly beat his drum.**

I am afraid that you will be lost.
Our children will never play at night.
Some small islands will be out of sight.
The unborn will choose to be a ghost.
The Earth of life will miss its best friend,
Walking the path with chaotic trend.

* Patintero is a local team game in the Philippines.
** According to some folks, the Sun is being swallowed by a large serpent during the solar eclipse.