Day 841: Man in the Moon

Can you see the man in the moon? The face that is - the two dark smudges of eyes, a nose, and an O-shaped mouth? 

Sylvia Plath saw the face memorably as 'quiet with the O-gape of complete despair' in her poem The Moon and the Yew Tree. Billy Collins shares his changing views on it here, from lonely to melancholy. I just love the last line so lovely in its pleasantly surprising idea, its indication of brimming emotion - 'the round mouth open/as if he had just broken into song.' Ahh.

The Man in the Moon - Billy Collins

He used to frighten me in the nights
of childhood, the wide adult face, enormous, stern, aloft
I could not imagine such loneliness, such coldness.

But tonight as I drive home over these hilly roads
I see him sinking behind stands of winter trees
And rising again to show his familiar face.

And when he comes into full view over open fields
he looks like a young man who has fallen in love
with the dark earth,

a pale bachelor, well-groomed and full of melancholy
his round mouth open
as if he had just broken into song.