Susan 4th January 2021

Moonlight Sonata - A poem A spring evening. A large room in an old house. A woman of a certain age, dressed in black, is speaking to a young man. They have not turned on the lights. Through both windows the moonlight shines relentlessly. I forgot to mention that the Woman in Black has published two or three interesting volume of poetry. So, the Woman in Black is speaking to the Young Man: Let me come with you. What a moon there is tonight! The moon is kind – it won’t show that my hair turned white. The moon will turn my hair to gold again. You wouldn’t understand. Let me come with you. When there’s a moon the shadows in the house grow larger, invisible hands draw the curtains, a ghostly finger writes forgotten words in the dust on the piano – I don’t want to hear them. Hush. Let me come with you a little farther down, as far as the brickyard wall, to the point where the road turns and the city appears concrete and airy, whitewashed with moonlight, so indifferent and insubstantial so positive, like metaphysics, that finally you can believe you exist and do not exist, that you never existed, that time with its destruction never existed. Let me come with you. We’ll sit for a little on the low wall, up on the hill, and as the spring breeze blows around us perhaps we’ll even imagine that we are flying, because, often, and now especially, I hear the sound of my own dress like the sound of two powerful wings opening and closing