A Journey Through the Moonlight
1968

In sleep when an old man’s body is no longer
aware of his boundaries, and lies flattened by
gravity like a mere of wax in its bed . . . It drips
down to the floor and moves there like a tear down a
cheek . . . Under the back door into the silver meadow,
like a pool of sperm, frosty under the moon, as if in
his first nature, boneless and absurd.

The moon lifts him up into its white field, a cloud
shaped like an old man, porous with stars.

He floats through high dark branches, a corpse tangled
in a tree on a river

Russell Edson
Born: 9 April 1935, Connecticut, United States
Nationality: American
Died: 29 April 2014, Connecticut, United States

Edson was a poet, novelist, writer, and illustrator. Son of the cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson, he studied art from an early age and attended the Art Students League as a teenager. in the 1950s Edson began publishing poetry and his honours include a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Award