However, the rhetorical question that immediately follows the title: "Isn't the moon dark, too, most of the time?" presents a different story; bringing the attention back to the reader (lines 1-2). Even in the seventh stanza, when the speaker states another rhetorical question: "Why are you sad so often?" the reader will begin to wonder why they were thinking, why the poems were so dark (line 14). Pastan does this to make his theme stand out, the reason why the poems are so dark is because poets write about the world, which seems to be a dark place. The theme is also supported by the structure of the poem. Pastan's poem is a short poem of 16 lines, organized into 8 couplets, this structure causes Pastan's sentences to be broken down into short telegraphic lines with no more than five words in each line, "Ask the moon. Ask what it has witnessed" (lines 15-16). These paired lines are quick, sharp, and to the point, drawing attention to Pastan's message: poets don't intentionally write about dark phenomena, they simply see dark events in the world and feel the need to write about them.