[Matt Q]

Martin, I get the ending now. I think there was something confusing me about using 'till', and I think it remains slightly confusing. 'The informant's voice was thoroughly ethereal until the the sun turned fat etc.' has the implication that the quality of the voice somehow changes from ethereal to something else when the sun burns up. I guess, the absence of thought, the absence of minds means that's there's no longer anyone to hear to voice and to register its quality, so the concept of "ethereal" will not longer exist. But do you see what I mean? Anyway, I think that's what was confusing me. I like your "marge" fix.

Thanks for flagging the additional foot in mine. I've rewritten the line.

- Matt

[Martin Elster]

Matt - your line “one bite is all I'd need; I wouldn't chew” sounds good.

Thanks for your further comments about my ending. I see what you mean, and why it was confusing. I’ve tweaked it. I think “meanwhile” should be clearer.

Added in: On second thought, I’m going to go back to “fat and feverish” for the alliteration, and change "till" to "But soon the sun ..." I could be tinkering with this till Sol swells to a red giant, blows off its shell of ionized gas, and becomes a planetary nebula with a white dwarf glowing in the center. Where will we be then?

Have come back again to say I've revised once more. Is it clearer? Or is it too clear now?

[ross hamilton hill]

Kuminjay

The blind boy sits in the travelling dark
and the rippling roof is chanting soft.
He’s Buddha like in his endless night
where no stars wake and blink the light.

Three hundred K’s to the college gates;
a foreigner bound for narrow straits
that his blank stare must daily face
as others ape his shuffling gait.

Goodbye my friend, our Kuminjay.
Hope you sing your songs some day.
I called you son; was your skin brother.
Rare late in life to love another.

notes
Kuminjay: is an aboriginal term used when a boy has lost his father, if he has the same name as his father he cannot be called by that name for two years, instead he is called Kuminjay.
foreigner: tribal aboriginals speak their own language(s), an Australian boarding college is a new world for them.
skin brother: is a kinship initiation into a tribe, I became Kuminjay’s ‘skin brother’, he is my ‘skin uncle’.

[John Whitworth]

Here's another using 'InThe Dark' another way.

In The Dark

Who, with just a lobster's pincer, gouged out Grimbold's eyes?
Who hauled Hopjoy through the mincer, making mutton pies?
Who, with fermentation vats, so quite translated Bootleg Fatso,
Making soup for alley cats? Oh who can tell me who, ah who?
Who has kept us in the dark, oh who will whisper true?

Whose illegal migrant workers came without a hitch?
Who sold schoolgirl sex in burkhas to the filthy rich?
Who burned down the Ebenezer? Who torpedoed Little Caesar?
Who shut Mummy in the freezer? Who can tell me who, ah who?
Who’s the dog that didn’t bark, oh baby, was it you?.

Who's so hunky, huge and handsome, no-one can resist him?
Who holds Presidents to ransom? Who defies the system?
Who shows drug lords how to tango? Who takes bribes from every quango?
Who controls the whole fandango? Who can tell me who, ah who?
Who’s that grinning like a shark, oh it was always you.

[Sylvia Fairley]

That's a brilliant take on the subject, John.

[Martin Elster]

Good one, John. Here's another.

In the Dark

So much depends upon a German Shepherd,
a Vizsla, Collie, or this yellow Lab
beside the sightless lady who walks round
the treacherous streets and sidewalks of her city,
a place as dotted, spotted and as peppered
with gaping potholes, posts and curbs and cars
as space with comets, asteroids, and stars—
so different from those dog-less days as drab
as a book of empty pages and no plot.
With four good ears and six good feet they bound
along the lanes. Why pity them, this gritty
duo moving through this tangle fraught
with myriad risks? Do they appear to fear it?
How can they miss a step with such team spirit?

[Brian Allgar]

Another splendidly gruesome piece, John. I hope you have a supply of pseudonyms to hand.

I wonder whether the last line of the second stanza would be better if you found another rhyme that didn't repeat (by anticipation) the 'you' of the final stanza. But I don't have any suggestions, although I vaguely imagine lines like

Who’s the dog that didn’t bark when ---- was turned to glue?

And perhaps you need a question mark and a comma in the last line -

Who’s that grinning like a shark? ... Oh, it was always you.

[Nicholas Stone]

There aren't many who know what occurs late at night
On the Erebine grass of the Heath;
There are rumours, but how they fall short of the blight
If the truth be let out of its sheath!

It is said that a priestess of Hecate plays
On a lute wrought of baobab's wood;
That she sings Babylonic and Syriac lays
And lures men to vices from good;

How they fumble and tumble about on the ground,
How they ravish their vestments red!
By the time we wake up they'll be nowhere around
- And all the Abaddonites dead.

[Martin Elster]

In the Dark

As Arcturus sinks into the west and Vega winks as if in jest
and Cygnus floats on the filmy milk of the Galaxy as slow
and stately as an ocean liner overlooked by Ursa Minor,
as Lyra strums a song of silk, joined by Scorpio,

who shakes his tail in a raucous rattle, while Hercules sings songs of battle,
three figures in the moonless night meander by the cedar
across ten billion blades of grass with beads of dew as bright as brass,
lost beneath the cosmic light — two canines and their leader.

While the biped scans the universe as if it were a puzzle in verse,
the dogs explore the ancient scroll of Earth’s vast potpourri.
One studies distant suns while tripping on roots and stones, another’s dripping
from dipping himself in the swimming-hole, while the third one sniffs a tree.

As the stars revolve but never change and a mockingbird shows off his range
and bullfrogs croak and crickets croon and katies katydid,
while bats hunt bugs by ultrasound and a rabbit bounds and a fox slinks round,
the threesome amble to a tune outside the city’s lid.


Stanza 3, Line 4: "swimming-hole" was "sedge-trimmed hole" was "cattail hole."
Tweak in the last line: "the city’s lid" was "their city's lid."

[John Whitworth]

Brian, you are right. The re-jig is more complicated than you allow and I'll have to give it a proper think tomorrow, but thanks for the hint.