After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

'Binsey Poplars', Gerard Manley-Hopkins SJ, 1879

 

the emptiness of moonlight 

strikes me dumb

shadows flicker like an old film

cats eerilly call each to each,

cats yowl, strike a pose,

freeze, with fur mantled by shadow;

so much idiosyncratic beauty given to us - 

see the clouds scoop across the face

of the moon as the night-sky speeds by

rain is blown by the empty air into my face

rain is now soaking the bushes the cats

hide beneath, rain soon drains away,

the sky rumbles as a storm approaches,

the moonlight is reflected

off the dripping rain drops

I am drawn me into the open 

to worship with the druids

and all magnificently 'primitive peoples'

who knew the moon and stars

who venerated mother nature

cried and laughed beneath this same milky moon 

while all modern humans do:

is kill the kindest of our animal friends,

 desecrate and pollute the living green,

 work to destroy Eden's garden,

the richer we are,

the less we dream

and the more obscene we are.