Now’s a time to celebrate, drink
a toast with best French wine,
gather friends to break bread and
sing patriotic anthems. Look
into the eyes of your guests, smile at
the thought of what’s been done, the
great news, a return to the Moon.
Before radio silence, and
across 250,000 miles, the astronauts think
of love—of our love for them, of
their love for us—“we love you” and all
that love is on the dark side of the
moon, while back on Earth civilisations
are dying, rockets carry destruction; the
truth is, we can no longer see the moon
as benign. This coincidence of time has
undone all lyric, all hope. We have seen
the darkness passing
overhead. It will not go by.
Liam Boyle lives in Galway, Ireland. His work has been published in various journals in Ireland and internationally. He was a featured reader in the New Writing Showcase at Galway's Cúirt International Festival of Literature 2025.