Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

'The moon (unfinished)' by Omar Musa | States of Poetry ACT - Series One

by
States of Poetry ACT - Series One

'The moon (unfinished)' by Omar Musa | States of Poetry ACT - Series One

by
States of Poetry ACT - Series One

One day,
after it has died,
we will hold a vigil for the moon.

We will burn candles,
cheap mimics of its light,
& utter prayers we forgot to utter

while it still lived.
And we will say,
'Remember how it
spoke to us its bone-coloured dreams?
Remember how it gave us hope
when all else seemed savage?'

And some will say it was carved
from whale bone,
while others will swear it was a coin
flicked from the thumb of God.

And Death will come down the alleyways,
ringing its bells & swearing its oaths,
singing its story through
the windows of a ruined world.

And the executioner will cry silently
for those he has slain.
He will caress their shadows
& tell them to run.

But he, they, us,
will have nowhere to go,
no final memory
but a taste of the moon,
who once so sweetly told us
of what we might dream.

 

Omar Musa

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.