The Moon -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

I.

AND, like a dying lady lean and pale,

Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,

Out of her chamber, led by the insane

And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,

The moon arose up in the murky east

A white and shapeless mass. 

 

II.

 

Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,

And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy? 

 

When Jane selected Shelley's The Moon to memorize and recite as a 6th grader, I was pleased and proud of her.

Reading today's news story about the US government's crazy, sick plan (Link) hatched during the 1950s to blow up that celestial body to show dominance over the Soviet Union was funny, but also profoundly disturbing, as were the article about the Obama administration's hideous drone warfare rulebook (Link) and, of course, the continuing broadcasts of the truly odd Brad Pitt/Chanel No. 5 commercial.

These all make yesterday's Christo Masaba/Abu Dhabi theme park posting seem absolutely benign and pure.  

Oh well;  I don't think I broke it.  I'm not buying any of it.

 

Top:  Vija Celmins, Moon Surface, Surveyor 1 (1971-72), Graphite on acrylic ground on paper.

Middle:  Vija Celmins, Moon Surface, Luna 9, detail (1969), Graphite on acrylic ground on paper.

Bottom:  The Feel of the Moon, Ronald F. Scott, Scientific American 217, No. 5 (November 1967), page 34.