Version I:
What are roses, these endless feelings,
that come with evening?
The odors that assail me
from a placid painting:
past the cedars,
past the scales of light,
buried under opal waters.
Here sprawled the octagon of wood
and flames that sputtered on the yellow sand.
There bent rusty swings
and laughter slung at stars;
nowhere ancient ghosts,
only windy waves plucking
clustered clouds against the marbled sky -
mirroring my memory
personal comments:
Originally wrote this after a day of doing nothing. Suddenly, there was a feeling of human waste that overwhelmed me. I remembered summer camp when I was 8. Perpetually the outsider - the observer - I was alone. And now I am alone with my memories.
Version II:
Upon Seeing Vermeer
This polygon of wood,
framing yellow sand,
slants ink shadows,
hoards stars,
draws marbled feelings
from color bleeds
of placid paintings:
a cedar bent with sound,
a still absorbed with light
in ocher liquor drowned
mirroring my memory.
-The first version was a bit haphazard - with some broken attempts at rhyme and iambic meter. The theme was also unclear - a pastiche of nostalgia - such things do not read very well later on, or to others. I realized a seed of a painting imagery in the first poem and expanded it here into a kind of conceit. Words have been minimized - cut down..trimmed to the oddities of language. Some constructions remain archaic for form (eg in ocher liquid drowned). Is further change warranted?
 germanicus2 · Mon Jul 28, 2008 @ 03:17am · 0 Comments |
