Dear Arthur,
I felt this was a bit over-written, and in places a bit too 'poetick'. A
few suggestions below :
(I have changed the message into plain text, because rich text causes
problems on some sytems. In fact some people receive it as garbage and
cannot read it at all.)
Kind regards,
grasshopper
From: "Arthur" [log in to unmask]
Subject: new sub: Bathing by starlight
Date: 12 February 2002 08:48
Bathing by starlight. (scroll down for original version)
Here, where the round shouldered shrubs
drop petals on the skin of dark waters,
gleams the clear and bowered pool.(Why the inversion ,which sounds archaic?
'the clear and bowered pool gleams' would sound more natural)
The night is an arbour of looming trees (arbour and bowered perhaps too
close in meaning)
and stars crackling high over the bush.
Strange constellations where cartwheeling Orion
tumbles the rest asunder. (asunder v archaic, perhaps something simple ?
Apart?)
I stand naked and cool, white as any petal, (I'm not sure about this
simile..anyway you describe yourself as pallid in the next line, so it's
redundant)
sacked by fever, pallid and forked, (forked is a very Elizabethan adjective
for me, not sure what it adds here)
wedges of sudden bone; sentient, skeletal me, (this sounds odd to me. I
would prefer something like 'lowering myself into the grip..'
lowered into the grip of chill water. Lulled by
the plashings of my swim and the loquacious stream, (loquacious stream,
seems a bit of a mouthful to me-why not something simpler like 'speaking')
I roll and float, a pale fish,
belly up, silent as the depths of ocean;
count the countless stars, as the world wheels and hurtles
From: "Arthur" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: new sub: Bathing by starlight
Bathing by starlight.
Here, where the round shouldered shrubs
drop petals on the skin of dark waters,
gleams the clear and bowered pool.
The night is an arbour of looming trees
and stars crackling high over the bush.
Strange constellations where cartwheeling Orion
tumbles the rest asunder.
I stand naked and cool, white as any petal,
sacked by fever, pallid and forked,
wedges of sudden bone; sentient, skeletal me,
lowered into the grip of chill water. Lulled by
the plashings of my swim and the loquacious stream,
I roll and float, a pale fish,
belly up, silent as the depths of ocean;
count the countless stars, as the world wheels and hurtles
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