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| Lunar Eclipse, photo by Howard Brannen |
The Lunar Eclipse will be happening tonight, Thursday, August 27.......it will be what is called a "blood moon" eclipse because of it's copper colored effect. Here in Arizona (MST) we can witness the eclipse at 7:30– Partial eclipse, and by 9:00 PM it will be the maximum eclipse showing the dark reddish-brown hue. By 11:00 it will be finished.
Poet Denise Levertov imagined the Eclipse as not a phenomena, but as a Mass, a celestial event that moves us all in its orbit into the sacred, and the mystic.
MASS OF THE MOON ECLIPSENot more slowly than frayed human attention can bear,but slow enough to be stately, deliberate,a ritual we can't be sure will indeed movefrom death into resurrection.As the bright silver inch by inchis diminished, options vanish,life's allurements.the last silver lies face down, back hunched, a husk.But then, obscured, the whole sphere can be seento glow from behind its barrier shadow:bronze, unquenchable, blood-light.And slowly,more slowly than desolation overcame,overtook the light, the lightis restored, outspread in a cloudless pasture ofspring darkness where firefly planesfuss to and fro,and humans turn off their brief attentionin secret relief.No matter: the Rite contains its power,whether or not our witness rises toward it;grandeur plays out the implacable dramawithout even flicking aside our trivial absence,the impatience with which we fail to respond.And yetwe are spoken to, andwe do stop, do,do give ourselves leaveto listen, to watch. The moon,the moon we do after all love,is dying, are we to liveon a world without moon?We swallow a sour terror.Then that coppery sphere, no-moonbecome once morefull-moon, visible in absence.And still without haste,silver increment by silver increment,the familiar, desired, disregarded brillianceis given again,given and given.
Denise Levertov, "Mass of the Moon Eclipse"from This Great Unknowing: Last Poems,1999, New Directions Press
