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In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning - day after day, Just try to see in the dark - just try to make it work - To feel the fear before you're here - I make the shapes come much too close - I pull my eyes out - hold my breath and wait until I shake, The Manmoth Prophecies, The woods are lovely dark and deep. But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god
The Man-Moth – Elizabeth Bishop (1936)
Here, above,
cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.
But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.
Up the façades,
his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push his small head through that round clean opening
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)
But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.
Then he returns
to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.
The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.
Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.
If you catch him,
hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil,
an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids
one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips.
Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention
he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over,
cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.
And so three o’clock it is, well then, I am neither wild beast nor a god, nor a beastly god I’d like to add, though I delight in solitude. And while the woods are lovely, dark and deep, I gave no promises to keep—least whys none that anyone would recall. I trust you’re not calling my hand. And now, for the day gathers late, I shall go off to sleep and dream of Man-moths scaling buildings of brick and mortar.
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A godly beast perhaps? We are all Small Gods in a fashion. Some more than others.
sonmi and the Cloud take no responsibility for any nightmares suffered forthwith, postwith, secondwith, or any other with who I may occur on her watch. Take your chances – however there’s a promise that some shall be pleasant in form within the dream, rather than all scratchy, hairy Mothmen, raising a smile, not screams of blood curdling terror and the like. smiles.
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