In pictures, each floats the sky alone,
its surface marked by steri-strips:
a mole becomes a knob-headed pin,
the scars where miners have gone in, blurred Xs.
By now the vast canals, some silted shut,
seem stonily immune to probes
pinging home faint discomforts.
So we're relieved both worlds include
only the grayish skies they drift through
and just one cupola or darkened hut.
These last, by signaling each other,
can gather, as the great head of Buddha
does from his amazing topknot,
all tender, contradictory feelings.