Who Cut the Moon?

By Ali Soulio

In clear blue skies hides the crime of crimes

       Breaking hitherto broken spirit of mine,

Enlighten where I, blind of rage, am to meet

                                    face upon face

            the one that so decisively incised my love’s.

 

In clear blue skies hides the crime of time

      Breaking hitherto broken spirit and spine,

How snug that smug hand of yours must rest

On the hilt of a six century old sword

                        that splits all swords and crests!

 

For it was in the milky light of day, when tourists cannot see,

   That the tides were shifted and her ocean shafted

            And crafted a menacing mal-enounced qirmizi

           That otherwise would have glistered a quivering silver

And reflected in slithers

                        the inverted image of a distant capsized Khawabi.

 

   It was in the haze of the sun that one gazed on a swarm

Of pestering metallic wasps levying an envoy of sandstorm

            in the shape and “sound of a screeching metal claw,”

she, my sister, had told me

               through teeth shawl’d in tears of angst and mourn.

 

But it was I who had shaved with my celestial plane

            — sword of swords not unlike yours —

And carved away at this loosely mangled shingle,

                                                         dull orb of dust settled awry,

Until just a lissome sliver of itself r’mained in the sky.

 

So why search I for the faceless soul,

      The soulless face

For the answer to a question’s request

                                    so unanswerably so?

 

      Why oh why does the moon now not glow

But dangle at angles opposed to itself —

         A black string cut at one end, and cut once more —

So that it sits of the crux of itself

            Like the horns of a fallen ungulate of lore

                        that has surely done so at least twice before.

 

Who then will take my question that dangles

            much like the moon now split in four?

Who cares to hear my inquest foolhardily so,

      Who cares for the answer non know anymore!

 

            For I am the one with the celestial plane,

And pearl-like carvings itch the skin of my wrists.

      Yes I am that soulless face without face,

                        skulker who buried the bulk of the moon

      Under where rests the human race —

At Double Beach —

      Where not even the waters now reach.

 

And I,

     If I may full-heartedly whisper,

Am nothing

         But a twin’s whisper

                              of a history and its sister embracing itself,

Lovingly smothering its lonesome wealth,

Both giving and taking from the same cradle

          and leaving no breath but a stealthy gasp

                at the dread of an embedded fable.

 

Ali Soulio is an Albanian Australian writer from Adelaid.