I enjoyed this piece a lot David . although i would (perhaps) have liked more from the hint of promised rhyme that you set beautifully into play at the outset and throughout the second stanza . still i understand it could have become an unsutainable burden and broken many lines that are simply stand alone wonder . i take particular pleasure from "in steep sunk sleep, a cud of dreams" "this herd had never heard" and "forwards into night-buttoned, carbon," although the syllabics in that latter line could be revised to tighten those places where the eight and six counts break and that's my biggest question (not problem but a question) about the poem?
a site-responsive poem . i appreciate that
c
On Oct 29, 2011, at 10:10 AM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
> I don't know whether anyone would like to comment on the following piece but
> it is something I've been pushing about recently following a short stay at a
> Cistercian monastery guest-lodge. I'm not a Roman Catholic myself, so the
> poem has no doctrinal sensitivities or claims:
>
>
> *Monk's Guest House*
>
>
> Some distant schools of stars in swarm
>
> above a spire, and farm,
>
> and drowsing cows. All meat and milk
>
> in steep sunk sleep, a cud of dreams,
>
> untroubled by the muscled tower's
>
> electric prod, its bells' peals' starry tongue
>
> this herd has never heard
>
>
>
> since its first day tired. My watch face
>
> says three and my slow animal wakes
>
> as the bells' claw and clamber breaks
>
> the burr and mumble
>
> of where am I am. Legs and arms, feet
>
> to hands assemble
>
>
> like lines racing a plough. I snub
>
> forward into night-buttoned, carbon
>
> promising air, head down
>
> toward shell spills of crackle, side
>
> slips of gravel and a door
>
>
> homed low on a still stone hull
>
> where a shy
>
> bay chapel waits
>
> us and the hushed sparse wash
>
>
> of dark and morning vigil.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> David Joseph Bircumshaw
> "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is
> that none of it has tried to contact us."
> - Calvin & Hobbes
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
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> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
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