The Secret Splendour

(Response to the news that what had once been thought impossible was achieved by science)

The other side of the moon,

Ambrosia ultimate

For dream's tongue, is now brought

On a photographic plate.

The savour of that silence—

 The impossible—we speak forth.

 But through this cosmic capture

 More strange grows intimate earth:

Behind rapt eyes that scan

The back of the Man in the Moon,

Stirs deeper some almighty dark,

A self that is more than man.

12.12.59

Page 597