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Please don't write
any more poems about death.
I've read too many already,
and let's admit it,
they come too easily.
War. Grief. Sorrow. Loss: common
as poppies in spring
when it's still chilly outside,
the bright papery blooms
fading quickly.
Write the elusive
difficult poems
about love -
ones you know by heart
when words
fail;
A poem that stands on a riverbank
watching the flow—
a poem that surprises,
like a fish leaping out
from the turbulent darkness,
with all its might,
going upstream
with vigour and purpose,
and you know,
only because it moves
against the current,
it's alive.
2 comments:
What did you have in mind here? Which poems about war, grief and sorrow are "easy" or "common"? I like the image of the poem swimming upstream like a fish "leaping out from the turbulent darkness". And "a poem that surprises" reminds me of haiku, a form which I love. I am moved by this poem, I like it, but I am not sure I understand it. Poems that are "elusive and difficult" but also known "by heart" ... seems contradictory? And then the poem "stands on a riverbank" (like a fisherman?) and a few lines later the poem is the fish itself "going upstream"? Please explain ...
Well, that's not a good sign - when the guy I count on to explain to me what my poem means says he's confused. Okay I'll take the bait (pun intended).
So this was inspired by one of those poems that pops into my inbox every day. About the fifth in a week that was about death, dying, loss, grief etc. And I thought, in these fraught times, it's getting to easy to write poems about death. Everybody is getting into the act. What a terrible comment on our times (filled with war, bloodshed, grief.) Hence the first part - the allusion to the Great War, which was supposed to be the war to end all wars etc.
And then I thought what the world needs now are more poems about love (to paraphrase Bacharach/David who incidentally wrote songs about love during a very fraught time of political assassinations in the US, social upheaval, Vietnam etc.) Love poems are the hardest poems to write during fraught times, because it goes against the current... and now you see where the river/fish image comes from. Poetry should always go against the current, as in Dylan Thomas, rage against the dying of the light etc. So in times of war write love poems, the elusive poems, because they are so hard to come by. They are 'by heart' (that poppy image again? worn over the heart) because love can never truly be really put into words, it is located in the that imaginary organ we call 'the heart', but is actually just feeling, and more properly biologically located in the brain somewhere.
Yes, I make the poem the observer from the riverbank, and also the river itself, that is surprised by a leaping fish (that lives within it), because a poem that expresses that feeling of being alive (love) - the opposite of death (war) - in a way that words cannot, even as it tries. Like a fish swimming purposefully in the opposite direction of the current. If you saw a fish moving along with the current, like a poem written about death, grief, loss, during a time when death, grief and loss are common, then you can't be sure it's alive because it may be dead and just floating along with the current.
Boy that probably made no sense at all. And worse, the explanation exhausted me. Gives me much greater appreciation for your effort when you explain the meaning of my poems to me. I'm glad that despite it's lack of coherence (because of it?) you liked it and it moved you. In the end, what more can you ask from a poem?
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