Strawberry moon and all the gardens are leaking
the grass from the lawns, herbs from the beds
fish, seaweed, the reflections of moon phases from the ponds
bushes from the shape you cut them into.
You dug canals and moats, drained the swamp
you banished it but it continued to haunt you
hung in the air
a fine mist of mould spores
the walls between garden and field and forest and wasteland were always damp
changed shape when you weren’t looking
they dripped with slime
(a stinking dark juice that turned your concept maps, flowcharts, year plans, and evaluation sheets into a fermenting mush)
they shrank to lines, smudges, clouds of corroding dust
a network of plastic fish bones beneath urbanised areas
industrial zones and retail parks
no walls left just rails
to guide your agents
representatives of a sinister revenue model
emeralds for eyes, veins filled with coltan & eternity.
Hundreds of moons came and went
in the night the glow lit up faces you’d never noticed before
and after that glimpse, never saw again
though from then on you looked for them everywhere
hazy, crumbling blotches
on the simulations and models
acid rain stains on the city-marketing posters
you searched outside the condensation-covered windows of trains
in the gap between synthetic curtains
in the crowds that clumped in corridors, waiting rooms, checkpoints, production bottlenecks
in pale clouds of breath around the vending machine
swirling above the mire of the yard
the first resistance
shimmering there before sunrise
From the poem “Strawberry Moon.” Copyright © Dominique de Groen. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2024 by Michele Hutchison. All rights reserved.