I like it too. The idea of needing to use peripheral vision to see the
ghosts. And the idea that their importance is somehow... peripheral. And the
homophones, for example, "herd" (heard) and "timbers" (timbres), that you
notice when you think about it.
I'm not sure I like the trimeter. It seems rather... bouncy... for a poem of
drifting mists.
Something seems to go amiss when we get to
Listen as the night's herded
mists creep: a house creaks
in timbers to your ears.
To my ear the rhythm as well as the ghostly sibilance is lost, or at least
diminished, in these lines.
What about, er...
Listen. The night's herded
mists creep. The house
creaks its timbers. Listen.
(But it's your poem! I'm always in two minds about suggesting edits on this
list.)
I'm assuming "the vigils that us keep" is not meant to be "the vigils that
we keep" but is instead telling us that these vigils keep (sustain?) us.
Janet
On 13/04/2008, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Borley Perceptible
>
> Peripheral, the visions
> of slowly fading ghosts,
> legacies willed by pictures,
> prints off plastered walls,
> vanishing now like steps
> of blue unfolding smoke.
> Listen as the night's herded
> mists creep: a house creaks
> in timbers to your ears.
> Peripheral, the visions,
> the vigils that us keep.
>
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
--
Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
www.proximity.webhop.net (Poetry)
www.myspace.com/poetjj (Includes my occasional arts & culture blog)
The Line Mine, bulletin board for Perth poetry & spoken word:
[log in to unmask]
groups.yahoo.com/group/thelinemine
Breastfeeding info & help: www.breastfeeding.asn.au
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