Peter Balakian: Moonlight

Published in the New Yorker June 17, 2024. Click this page to hear the author reading the poem.


I was walking through the muddy pastures of Woodstock.

Even now, what do I know?




My days on the football field were numbered.

And—then—what did I know?




I pumped iron, ran down-and-outs—followed a pulling

guard. It was 1969 and men had just landed




on the moon; we watched it on TV two miles

from where a car went off a bridge at Chappaquiddick.




And so—Chappa-quid-dick floated

in the air; what matters more, the bridge or the moon?




Then—I thought I understood the moonlight

on the water snakes in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”




I knew that three women broke down the door at McSorley’s

that summer. Liberty was not just for men on the moon.




I walked out of McSorley’s with Coleridge’s poem

in my pocket, uplifted by their breakthrough.




I didn’t know Coleridge was high on dope.

I thought I knew his poem was an ode to love.




When I entered the pasture of love Canned Heat

needled my head. The sky was acid blue.




Whatever I knew—I didn’t know. The moon

stared over the groaning planet and that pasture.



Peter Balakian is the author of books including “No Sign” and “Ozone Journal,” which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He teaches at Colgate University.