Enclosure – RG Poem "The Moon Ends in Nightmare"

The Moon Ends in Nightmare
I had once boasted my acquaintance
With the Moon's phases: ×××× [crossed out] I had seen her, even,
Endure and emerge from full eclipse.
Yet as she stood in the West, that summer night,
The fireflies dipping insanely about me,
So that the foggy air quivered and winked
And the sure eye was cheated,
In horror I cried aloud: for the same Moon
Whom I had held a living power, though changeless,
Split open in my sight, a bright egg shell,
And a double-headed Nothing grinned
All-wisely from the rift within[RG]. the gap.
At that[RG] this[RG] I found my earth no more substantial
That the lower air, or the upper,
And ran to plunge in the cool flowing creek,
My eyes and ears pressed under water, .[RG]
And there[RG] did[RG] I drowned[RG], and left[RG] leaving[RG] my corpse in mud ×××× [indecipherable] ?
Yet still the thing was so.
I crept to where my window beckoned warm
Between the white oak and the tulip tree
And rapped – but was denied, as who returns
After a one-hour-seeming century
To a house not his own.

Hands Referenced

    • Annotation: ink correction
    • Character: regular
    • Ink: black

People Mentioned

  • Robert

    Graves, Robert
    [1st person]. (1895-1985). Poet, novelist, essayist, critic, and author of his diary. eds.

Organizations Mentioned

  • Editors

    Editors of the Graves Diary Project.

Bibliography

    • Title: Moon Ends in Nightmare, The [poem: draft enclosed: see diary May 6, 1939. eds.]
    • Title: Robert Graves: Complete Poems Vol. III
    • Author: Graves, Robert
    • Editor: Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward
    • PubPlace: Manchester
    • Publisher: Carcanet Press
    • BiblScope: pp. 347, 528 (note)
    • Date: 1995-1999