Alice Oswald

Full Moon

Read by Theodoros and George (Greece)

Good God!

What did I dream last night?

I dreamt I was the moon.

I woke and found myself still asleep.

It was like this: my face misted up from inside

And I came and went at will through a little peephole.

I had no voice, no mouth, nothing to express my trouble,

except my shadows leaning downhill, not quite parallel.

Something needs to be said to describe my moonlight.

Almost frost but softer, almost ash but wholer.

Made almost of water, which has strictly speaking

No feature, but a kind of counter-light, call it insight.

Like in woods, when they jostle their hooded shapes,

Their heads congealed together, having murdered each other,

There are moon-beings, sound-beings, such as deer and half-deer

Passing through there, whose eyes can pierce through things.

I was like that: visible invisible visible invisible.

There's no material as variable as moonlight.

I was climbing, clinging to the underneath of my bones, thinking:

Good God! Who have I been last night?