la nouvelle lune;

The moon also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren
Her radiance scathes me.  Or perhaps I 
have caught her.
--Sylvia Plath, Elm
featuring 'The New Moon' by Albert Aublet

'Fritz Zuber-Buhler is one of those itinerant dancing girls common in portions of Southern Europe still, who reclines by the roadside in the forest to doze and dream away the summer noonday.  Jules Lefebvre represents in "Salome," the daughter of Herodias, an essentially Semitic type of the antique period, with the sensuous and soulless beauty of the tigress rather than the woman, bearing the charger which is to receive the head of John the Baptist, and the sword which is to decapitate him, as indifferently as if it were a piece of fruit.'

(The new moon graced our early morning sky at 6:38 a.m. here in the LA area...
For the rest of us sleepy darlings, we can look forward to enjoying a starry moonless night...)

;