James Dickey, poet and author
best known for Deliverance, from which the 1972 film of the same name was made,
performed his poem “The Moon Ground," originally written for Life magazine, for the American
Broadcasting Network (ABC) on the occasion of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
Dickey's spoken word performance of this poem was broadcast in the days following
the first moon landing in 1969.
The complete poem is provided
below. In transcribing the poem from Dickey’s performance it becomes clear he
flubbed a line in the sixth stanza, indicated in bold-faced text and brackets.
The stanza structure is my own interpretation.
_______________________________________________________
"The Moon Ground," by James Dickey
You look as though you know me
though the world we came from
is striking you in the forehead
like Apollo
Buddy, we have bought the gods
We know what it is to shine
far off with Earth
We alone of all men can take off
our shoes
and fly
one-sixth of ourselves we have
gathered
both of us, under another one of
us overhead
He is reading the dials
He is understanding time
to save our lives
You and I are in Earth-light
and deep Moon shadow
on magic ground of the dead new
world
and we do not, but we could
leap over each other like
children
in the universal playground of
stone
but we must not play at being
here
we must look
we must look for it
the stones are going to tell us
not the why, but the how of all
things
Brother, your gold face flashes
on me
it is the Earth
I hear your deep voice rumbling
from the body
of its huge clothes
Why did we come here?
It does not say,
but the ground looms
and the secret of time
is lying within amazing reach
It is everywhere we walk
Our glass head shimmering with
absolute heat and cold
we leap solely along it
we will take back the very stones
of time
and build it where we live
or in the cloud-stripped blue of
home
will the secret crumble in our
hands with air?
Will the Moon-plagued kill our
children in their beds?
The human planet trembles in its black
sky with what we do
I can see it hanging in the God-gold-only-brother
of your face
We are this world
We are the only men
What hope is there at home
in the azure of breathe
or here with the stone-dead
secret?
My matted clothes bubble around
me
crackling with static and grave
elegy
helplessly coming from my heart
and I say, I think something from
high school,
I remember now, say it’s the glimmering
landscape on the site
[and all the air of solemn stillness holds]
Earth glimmers and in its air color
of solemn stillness holds it
Oh brother, Earth-faced god,
Apollo
My eyes lined with unreachable
tears
My breathe goes all over me and
cannot escape
We are here to do one thing only
and that is, rock-by-rock, to carry
the Moon
to take it back
our clothes embrace
We cannot touch
We cannot knell
We stare into the Moon dust
the Earth glazing ground
We laugh with the beautiful praise
of static
We bend
We pick up stones
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