[RCrawford]

Birthday Visit

Here, just past the stones, the uncut grass
erases unmarked plots of boys who they’ve
dumped, like him, into a pauper’s grave.
A misspent youth who’d learned by cutting class

and met a bullet in his fifteenth year,
fulfilling gutter prophecies at birth,
he lies beside young princes of the earth
who’d fought for turf but found their kingdoms here.

Innocent or not – among the dead
it’s all the same; and though the righteous say
for everyone there’ll come a judgment day,
she who seeks him here and can’t forget
sees judgment in the deaths the dead bequeath,
the city’s children sown like dragon’s teeth.

[RCrawford]

I always liked the last line of this sonnet. But I thought it was describing headstones as concrete anti-tank pylons—the kind sown along the West Wall in Germany in World War II. Nice image. When I reread the poem it began to make less and less sense. These were unmarked plots. They didn’t have any headstones! Wikipedia came to my rescue. Dragon’s teeth in mythology:

Cadmus, the bringer of literacy and civilization, killed the sacred dragon that guarded the spring of Ares. The goddess Athena told him to sow the teeth, from which sprang a group of ferocious warriors called the spartoi.

That made more sense.

Except for the dead/forget rhyme I admire this sonnet’s construction and its theme. I do wonder who the “she” in the poem is—his mother? Or, more likely, his teacher.

[E. Shaun Russell]

Lovely...haunting and mysterious. It feels a little familiar, but it's constructed well enough that I don't mind.

The dead / forget non-rhyme / slant rhyme doesn't bother me at all, oddly enough.

This is a definite contender for me.

[Catherine Chandler]

So sad and so true. A very fine sonnet. I would guess that David Anthony wrote this.

[Michael Cantor]

A fine sonnet, and what's strange is that there's something in the diction which makes it sound as if it were written 100 years go - the kind of artificially dated style I normally detest - and here it works very well. Either it's done so well it overcomes my normal reaction, or I'm slowing down. Either way, it's one of my favorites.

[Roger Slater]

Also one of my favorites in the competition. Fine work.

To me the diction doesn't seem 100 years old. What modernizes it for me is the number of contractions, with "they've" even serving as a rhyme word.

[Ann Drysdale]

A sad and gentle look at gang culture and the self-perpetuating destruction it engenders. I like this a lot.

[Mary Meriam]

Full of feeling, beautifully accomplished, and a compassionate monument for a lost soul.

[ross hamilton hill]

Was thinking of Holly Martins, how he hasn't been around much lately, maybe he wrote this.
It is very fine, his UK accent would explain the rhymes that feel off to US readers.
I'd like the poem to be in one big chunk, even if there is a change of thought process.

[Woody Long]

Not just sad (which indeed it is), but ominous and timely, because of the foreseen judgment in L13 & the dragon's teeth in L14 (from which will spring armed men).

These aspects add depth and expanse to the personal drama portrayed in the foreground and bring the poem to a very strong close.

— Woody