Full Moon, West Coast

Blotched with its unattainable mountains

this was that yellow half-wheel rolled above Bald Hill,

diminishing cirque climbed to its apogee of night,

unsluicing sheeted silver on the world.

It rose persimmon-colored from the sea,

and hued like pumpkin as it fired the trees,

suffused and swollen, lanterning the dusk;

now less than evening size,

possesses all blue midnight and looks down,

pouring from zenith on the blank-faced stones.

Leaving no wrinkle on the planet's face

at loss of what its winds and waves absorb

and grind and blow to nothingness

here are the furious struggles all brought down:

slow drown of clashing towers of jangled bells

and bodies that were wasted sacks of blood

subsiding to the lit and level floor,

their heroes cried to silence.

Here is negation of both word and deed,

of goodness and of evil in men's hearts, '

a pool wherein the heaviest stone may fall

and write its weight of nothing on the glass.