Hi Colin,
I haven't read a wind poem for ages!
I sense the language is a tad too metaphorical at times (so, so many
comparisons are made...) and, altho I like the leaps metaphors create in
poems, I wonder if all the imagary you've got is weighing the poem down...
Some seem wacky (ants & buldozers!) and some seem exciting (the moon in a
bowling alley).
I mean I'm dizzy in trying to get to grips with:
>distorts dead matter to electronic presence
>as though the world's elements
>were there for our whim,
>
>the universe made slave
>and not a bulldozer leaning on an ant's raft."
(It might be that a poem that's working with three-line stanzas is often
less giddy - I don't know...)
I printed it out and used a felt-tip to highlight the essentials of the
building - and then looked at all the rest - and felt not so much bewildered
by the deluge of imagary as feeling I could discover such bewilderment with
less.
It's as if you've given the poem a perm too many. Give the poem a shave and
a haircut, I say!
Bob
>From: "Dewar Colin [FVPC]" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: newsub(building)
>Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 11:53:37 -0000
>
>At work in this building
>
>
>
>
>
>This building is awash
>in an autumn wind
>where branches curl like waves
>
>about to fall and surge up,
>where kaleidoscope clouds
>pummel the air with their turning
>
>where the moon thunders by in its bowling alley,
>where meteors like missiles
>zip invisibly in near misses
>
>while the dark centre of the galaxy,
>the ghost hole that crushes and sucks in all that approaches
>goes on sucking and crushing like a cosmic gullet.
>
>Soon this craft will be sunk by time in a stone ocean.
>Bricks slip from its side, slates loosen.
>Rain trickles in from a window pane
>
>or drips through the ceiling to a plastic pan.
>It is being worn by the same forces
>that wedge rocks apart and level mountains
>
>but in its sheltering hollow
>we know none of this,
>walk obliviously in corridors,
>
>labyrinthine as a rabbit's warren,
>past illuminated pastel walls
>as bland and featureless as marzipan.
>
>They offer us no record of time.
>The floor of slotted nylon tiles
>is firm on its boards,
>
>shows no sign of lifting in a sailor's wake
>nor what abyssal currents bear us on.
>We may not love but we live here.
>
>Our roles are given and we need them to know each other,
>would be lost if we met elsewhere
>but here we play our part in a process,
>
>co-operate like ants,
>enact titanic ritual to the end.
>Even as this vessel slowly sinks
>
>its warmth is steady in winter,
>as homeostatic as the human form,
>a second skin to insulate from all that would terrify and subdue.
>
>The waters of the world have not broached its boilers yet.
>The fluorescent tubes give constant light.
>We cannot even see the moon
>
>until we enter an unlit room
>and that moon is kind,
>when watched outside its freezing flight.
>
>We cannot feel the wind.
>So why should we know that this refuge is fleeting
>as a cave of branches in a battered wood?
>
>Cups and plumbing pipe tamed water to our lips,
>assist customs that we spin out
>as if endowed with all the time in the world.
>
>Cupboards hoard cassettes faithfully in our voice
>until we come back.
>E-mail lassos connections in absence,
>
>distorts dead matter to electronic presence
>as though the world's elements
>were there for our whim,
>
>the universe made slave
>and not a bulldozer leaning on an ant's raft.
>Right to the end of the day
>
>it maintains us in this limbo
>that is and is not life,
>familiar as the human face,
>
>where we stare at each other bewildered,
>comforted by substance only,
>yet knowing exactly what to say.
>
>
>_______________________________
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