I'd be tempted to edit the first stanza - do you need the car?
The second stanza is just great.
The third stanza suffers from appearing abstract. I think it is because you
don't get a handle on the subject (the sundial) until line 3, which makes it
feel unrelated to the bloke in the bed.
That makes the subsequent two stanzas feel like unattached descriptions. I'd
like you to stick closer to the body mentioned in S2, in situ preferably.
The final stanza is great. It needs the flickers of the previous two - so
perhaps bring them into the bedroom??
Good one, Arthur. Dragged me away from revising the pharmacological
management of heart failure, anyway...
Terri )O(
-----Original Message-----
From: The Pennine Poetry Works [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of arthur seeley
Sent: 25 June 2003 06:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: New sub: A poem in search of a title.
This is an older piece considerably reworked.
A poem in search of a title.
A car passes down the wet road;
light slides over my curtains.
I watch the arrow fly across my room,
then night resumes. The glow of numbers
at my side, tells the long dark down to day.
Fitful, I hear the soft insistence of my heart
and tides of breath beat out their span,
per second, per second.
I shake my hand, deadened by my body’s weight,
to feel the loosed blood thrill again.
Its stone plinth, fast rooted,
gnomon aligned to the earth’s tilt,
the bronze dial turns towards the sun,
measures and enumerates its unclouded passage,
shadows the hours, the pulse of seasons- years.
Flies butt and buzz,
eyes flash, fail and dim,
birds flit, clouds drift, sands shift,
leaves flicker, grasses sway, seas lap
and rivers run under the apparent journeys of the sun.
A sere leaf taps my shoulder,
a bird-abandoned bough quivers,
Leaf- and petal-fall, moon in thrall,
the wind’s melody stroked from swung chimes,
all evaluate the same equations.
When all I am is stilled,
senses nullified, pitched into silence,
I will no longer know these soft flickers,
flights of time, nor mind the chiding of decay
that moulders me to other lives.
|