—To everyone who folds the moon into a pocket and runs for sixpence
For that moon, how many strings could you sever?
For her, what else can you still bear to lose?
Years and hours—beside a dust-thick canvas, what remains to you?
Defeat swells in every night-tide;
when belief turns to a sodden scrap of paper,
can you still clench it like a chart and sail?
The bright moon overhead is the love in the heart;
the sixpence is the need of the day.
Who is not a wooden puppet on wires,
caught between freedom and tether,
welcoming at once the light and the dust?