#ESSAY# The Moon Child | 中秋
The Moon Child
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The moon has fallen to the ground and become a child.
A child of tender skin, soft hair the hue of the stars, and bright eyes the depth of the cosmos. The child from the skies that falls into the world. Headlong it falls, like a shooting star, fleeting, reeling, leaving behind a trace of sprinkled gold across the nightly canvas of the darkest blue.
Some saw it fall -- those that peak a glance now and then into the night sky on their busied commute; those that struggle in the gutters but still gaze up into the sky with valiant hopes or feeble despairs; those that wear the night screen as a cloak underneath which their secret dreams may finally come true -- they saw; others didn’t.
They saw the Moon Child, without realising what they had seen. So fleeting it passed, so fleeting and reeling, that the only hindering proof of its existence was the sprinkled gold it left behind. The sprinkled gold that dazzles their eyes into dizziness.
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But a poet there was, who could see more than the ordinary. In his clear eyes the falling moon reflects, as a luminous bulb hovering in a pool. So he found the Moon Child, sleeping in a circular pool. No light peers through the tattered leaves to pour over the glade, but a radiant glow flows from out the pool and flickers upon the woods. Moonlight it was, moonlight rippling from the center of the pool; moonlight gleaming from the little child sleeping in the pool.
The footsteps of the poet aroused the little child, however lightened they may be. It opens its eyes and gazed into those of the poet. And a wind passes through the pool, twisting the light into a hundred broken fragments swaying in disturbed water. Light has shaken the tranquil pool; and night has fallen upon the pool.
‘Come with me, little child,’ says the poet; ‘come with me, my dearest moon. The night is too cold for you, the pool too deep. In my abode you shall find warmth, warmth of the hearth and comfort of the cloth. Clothed you shall be in my abode, and in my abode you shall be warmed.’
The child laughs, ‘I have seen many a billion nights, and pools I have fewer than a million. You think I want warmth, but it is you that feels cold; you deem I need cloth, but it is you that feels shame. Long have I watched this sphere, and this sphere long I have guarded. You are but fleeting mortals to me, buzzing in my dream.’
With this it returns to a sweet sound sleep.
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But the poet took the moon as it sleeps, and hid it in his treasure chest. He hid it so well that no one shall touch its skin, or glimpse its hue, or fall into its beautiful eyes deep as the cosmos. He tells the moon child: now I shall be thy protector, thy guardian, thy one and only benefactor. Thou art safe with me; and with me thou art at thy best.
The Moon Child, without its powers in the cosmos, made no reply. Days passed and so passed nights, no moon gleamed again in the sky.
‘Tell me, tell me the stories of what you saw,’ says the poet, gazing into the moonless night; ‘for it seems to me you aim to return where nothing but darkness prevails. Barren, cold, empty, void -- is this your home? is this your place?’
Underneath the moonless night the Moon Child sighs a deepest sigh. It lies back in its little chest, the light of the hearth reddening its radiant face, the embroidery of the clothes binding its free body. It gazes too into the moonless night and says:
‘I have seen many a man like you, gazing into me, weaving out lines from the light they saw; I have seen many a girl not unlike you, glancing up to me, shedding down tears at my single sight. I have seen Selene dream of the ever-sleeping dream of eternity; I have seen Salomé dance her fleeting dance with her fleeting feet; I have seen dame flee to celestial home in fleeing silhouette; I have seen emperor enflame terrestrial towns with boundless flames.
‘I have seen tides rise and fall; I have seen times come and pass by. I have seen the valiant, the pathetic, the fortunate, the miserable. And they have all seen me. They have all seen me, knowing not what I have seen. They make me their own, so unanimously unique. They think they own me, knowing not they own nought.’
The poet fell silent; and silent fell he for a very long time. When he raised again his head he saw no child, but a full moon in the darkest sky of all nights. He smiled, and threw his quill into the dustbin.
Inspiration List
The Changeling - Lady Wilde
——是“天上掉孩子”灵感的来源
Moonchild - M83
——是标题的来源
Moonchild - Emune
Moonchild - King Crimson
——是搜到的两首意外应景的歌
Thanks for your read
By Amy
2019.09.13