Sunday, May 31, 2009

Poem: About Suffering They Were Never Wrong

I wrote this today to the prompt, "Describe a room." At first, it came out as prose, a paragraph en bloc, but as I read it, I decided it sounded like a poem and simply inserted line breaks. It's still very rough. The title is from W.H. Auden's poem, "Musee des Beaux Arts."

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About Suffering They Were Never Wrong

In this closet of a room, bisected from stem to stern,
one side tumbling with string, tied to ants and not,
seashells and the echoing ocean,
cones of conifers and pelts of beach-strewn animals,
feathers and feathers, some plastered with glue,
a discarded belt with a rash boy's blood,
hourglasses and spectacles and magnifying lenses
by which we spy blueprints and landmarks,
statues of Athenian children to be sacrificed
to some God dethroned, black sail and bride.

The other half, a bed made with pillows fluffed,
a doll tucked under the blankets, cataracts blooming in its eyes,
a stool and a desk, marbles in their leather bag,
wooden toys lined up, soldiers carefully arranged
with shield and spear in a phalanx,
the sun shining through the only window in this tower of legend,
and on the sill, a small footprint in the dust to indicate
where they jumped, the only impulse this side of the room
which prompted Minos himself to ask
how come it was the one who made it, not the other.

1 comment:

Steph said...

love it. your poetry is getting more melodic. i like the truncations and enjambment. :)