Aux Clairs des Lunes

‘Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania
Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten…’
(Syd Barrett)

‘But for her eyes, I should have fled away. 
…They saw me not 
But in blank splendour, beam’d like the mild moon,
Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not
What eyes are upward cast.’
(John Keats)

1 Phobos
Mars is littert wi robots and drones
slam-dunkit beh Uncle Sam
abune, wee Phobos skitters for bones,
its skull duntit in wi a bam.

But in thon titanic Stickney Cratur
we’ll pit oot a deckchair or twa
this century or mebbe later
and stare oot at nithin ava.

2 Europa
Nou ilka clood-curl in Jupiter’s broo
’s a swelchie as muckle’s the Yirth
sae cwa tae Europa an we’ll tak a cruise
wi an icebrakkin buhll fur oor berth.

Ablow frore sheets oan an ocean’s bed
(a mare withoot a name)
is whaur’s foond saut and, bitterly bred,
the microbes that stake oot life’s claim.

Sae creh me a geyser, the cauld mune croons,
tho nane hur hornpipe hears,
and thru clear ice see labyrinths rise
while we dance beh the licht o hur tears.

3 Hyperion
Whit dehvur plunkt i the Aegean deeps
foond iver a sponge lyk yon,
hauf-heidless ruff, hauf-deid or asleep:
the waatchmin Hyperion.

Owre Saturn he birls in a peplos, progressin
‘daithwards tae nae daith’
as Keats perceives his mortal lesson -
hou tae sing withoot a braith.

4 Charon
Beh the time this poem gets tae Pluto
aathin’s nearly no itsel;
the warlds lyk weans are playin Cluedo:
wha’s takin whame tae Hell?

Whit’s a planet, whit’s a mune?
whit’s past and wha’s past carin?
Jist row wir boat - ye ken the tune
be ye Michael or be ye Charon.

Moneta’s een are blank as moons
nae meteorite has marred;
Persephone coontit Dis’s spoons
eftir veesits beh oor bards.


Abune—above; duntit—bashed; ava—at all; swelchie—whirlpool; Yirth—Earth; cwa—come away; buhll—bull; frore—frozen; mare (Latin)—sea; saut—salt; dehvur—diver; peplos—a draped outer robe worn by women in Ancient Greece; weans—children; een—eyes.