Theodore Stephanides
Light-Shadowed
They say the grey light of the moon
Is dangerous to certain men;
That soeep beneath her rays
Awaken in a fabled den

Where all is strange, where all is new
(Old things are seen in weird disguise),
Where every leaf, where every stone,
Now fills the soul with fresh surprise.

And such men never quite return
To the same life they knew before,
They ever see a moonlit world
As throug a dim half-door.

But only they need fear the moon
Whose shadows scarcely press the earth;
Whose shadows, light as their own dreams,
Are buoyed Fantasy and Mirth.
(from "The Golden face", 1965)