poetryetc at this time of year is always quiet, I seem to remember -
holiday and travel time for the northern hemisphere…
Otherwise I expect by now someone would have wondered aloud whether
pouchily
and
springlessly
were maybe uncomfortable coinages from Bill.
But let them pass…
I have some difficulty with eye sockets changing
probably because for me a socket is made of bone.
The turn at line nine is welcome, yet -
eight lines of ‘concreteness’ seem to me to call for a turn
that does not lapse into a big abstraction -
Hopkins poems have similar problems shifting from the experiential to the abstract.
Is there a way for ‘beauty’ to be held over until we can sense what might bring it to mind.
Lines ten to twelve don’t quite do this.
Choughs? fussing and fossicking?
sinister birds with sharp beaks.
For you, Bill, but not for me.
(Earlier today in the park I noticed a dead magpie - handsome but very dead.)
Oddly I am about to post a verse snap with ‘beauty’ in it.
Max in Melbourne
On 13 Aug 2014, at 8:04 am, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Compensations
>
> Cheeks hang baggy.
> Face spills onto pillow.
> Eye sockets fold and droop
> forgetting former close bone cling
>
> Skin sags pouchily from shoulder
> bone, as if from Brahman cow.
> Muscles think before flexing,
> withdraw springlessly.
>
> Yet beauty still bounces,
> choughs fuss and fossick.
> And tonight - so they say,
> The moon will be Super.
>
> bw
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