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| Magnetic Moths, Sir Roger Penrose (1938) |
Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.”
Here,
above,
cracks
in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.
The
whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies
at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he
makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does
not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling
the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a
temperature impossible to record in thermometers.
But
when the Man-Moth
pays his
rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon
looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an
opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and
nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He
thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving
the sky quite useless for protection.
He
trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.
Up
the façades,
his
shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him
he
climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push
his small head through that round clean opening
and be
forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man,
standing below him, has no such illusions.)
But what
the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he
fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.
Then
he returns
to the
pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he
flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast
enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.
The
Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the
train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without
a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He
cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.
Each
night he must
be
carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as
the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his
rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the
third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs
there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has
inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep
his
hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.
If
you catch him,
hold up
a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil,
an
entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he
stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids
one
tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips.
Slyly he
palms it, and if you’re not paying attention
he’ll
swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over,
cool as
from underground springs and pure enough to drink.
Thanks to One More Folded Sunset for the suggestion.
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