Laurier Guest Artist Series: March 15, 2026 Lyrics

March 9, 2026

This Exact Shade of Moon by Jeffrey Ryan

Selections from PLUVIOPHILE by Yusuf Saadi

I. Painting a February Sky

On this palette, will mixing black and violet
uncover the nameless colour
tipping over the horizon, grief entering
sky's consciousness, dark-plum wine
spilled and bleeding
from the other sides of the canvas?
My body lured to marvel
at its secondary colours, to trace
this page's primary words. When I mix
this much love with drops of despair, do I create heartbreak, inertia?
Do I arrive at what I'm becoming? Words,
like colours, have gravity, they exert pull,
break in each other's wakes.
Isn't all matter subject to gravity?
Yes, but not like this. The way words pull you
into me, like faith stirred by desire.
To gather art to its primary source—search
for what has no name. Look up: mystery,
distance, beauty mix alchemically
to unveil this exact shade
of moon.

II. Meditation (Waxing Moon)

(instrumental interlude)

III. Love Sonnet for Light

I know a star in Andromeda broke
every colour in your heart. That you
shivered yourself to sleep in a meteor's
crevice or moon's crater whose dust
is now my skin. Beyond my finitude
you dream a wave and particle at once.
Know I love the way you warm my fingers,
pour gilt on my hardwood floors,
bear the universe's stories through bedroom
windows. I wish I could touch you—
not like two electrons repulsing, nor within
the semiotics of language, but hold you
how I hold a hand when I'm afraid—
and close my eyes when you're naked.

IV. Meditation (Full Moon)

(instrumental interlude)

V. If Van Gogh Worshipped the Moon

Desperate for paint—as the moon's
starved white ribs through your louvred
window demand their sacrifice. You
disregard its signs until night's corvine
feathers begin to fall across your mind.
Or an autumn leaf, bistre and wine-red,
a rare beauty.
Alone with Theo's letters on night so
long—each word stranded between pure
image and pure song. Starlight drips
across your pain. Moonlight walks
on water. And colours the only gods
to ever be: a saffron sunrise on
the sapphire sea.

VI. Meditation (Waning Moon)

(instrumental interlude)

VII. Reading Borges on the Moon

Its darkened face is lucent. Craters laddered
and cliffs escalatored. Electric boardwalk to sublunar
oceans: a stroll in a light gravity.
You remembered un bruñido disco in your poetry
but your moon is not my moon. The one Plato
marvelled at when he respited from his nyctophobia.
A burnt corona that blinded Homer
who couldn't spurn the beautiful. Or the madder
moon's omen in the sky after the battle of Badr.
Dreamtigers prowled among poachers of starlight.
In the future I find a field of deserted moonrock
and sit on a beach chair at dusk to read
Borges. Or to gaze at the Earth—a moon
to me now—scored white from the old fires.

VIII. Meditation (New Moon)

(instrumental interlude)

IX. Flowers on Europa

Autumn leaves don't crackle; skylarks
never sing; a touch of rainfall breaks
the bed. Do daffodils dissolve in your
unpractised inner eye? Each tulip spoor
clichéd, the orchids picked and roses dead.
Tonight I grow a darkness in my head.
Imagine frozen plumes above Europa:
the creaking ice is musical. The sun's iotas
feed extremophiles. And undiscovered flowers
flare within the doldrums. Glowing
petals shock the frost and sepals hug
themselves for warmth. The anthers drug
the moon with blanched light—imagined
from our window while we waste the night.