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I maintain that a poem is not what it is about, but what it leaves in its own wake as it passes through the water between writer and reader. This one leaves an alluringly imprecise image floating there. I don't ask any more from it than that.

(Not that there aren't other sorts of poems, of course--which can succeed in other entirely different ways)

Nemo

My favorite so far, though I'm not crazy about "endowed" and "describe," as they seem discordant word choices for the poem. I think the poem would be even stronger without lines 2 and 4.

I know this station. But it's not called Bloomfield. It's called Crewe and every British serviceman who's ever been posted from anywhere to anywhere despairs, at some stage, of ever leaving its platforms,
Peter Wyton.

A lovely, sad tone poem. Like many, I was puzzled at first, but I'm convinced by Wendy and Susan's reading of it as describing the homeless.

If that's the case, I'm uncertain about the use of "button holes" in line 4. If the intent is to suggest that the men's coats are ragged, then the holes in question are likely larger than button holes. (The holes in "safety nets," such as those below the high wire, are larger than button holes as well. And the holes in the metaphorical social "safety net," which the homeless have fallen through, are good-sized, too.)

I don't know what to suggest instead--"looping holes" or "unstopped holes"?

In any case, lovely work.

I cannot get over what seems to me a deep flaw in this piece, namely that these homeless people are thinking in riddles. The general complexity of the poem seems an exaggerated reaction to the equally naive notion that homelessness is a simple problem, and that the homeless should just find a job. At a certain point, intellectual gameplay becomes patronizing, and that is the case here. Who is this poem for, I wonder? And why the heck are homeless people being so lavishly dressed with mystique and metaphor? I'd be far more sympathetic if the poem made even the slightest effort to call half the attention to its subject matter that it does to itself. The priorities of this poem are unforgivably backward.

And why the ostentation of "On" in the title? Is this a philosophic treatise?

Sorry I cannot be more positive here.

Nick

Well, I'm hoping the writer will provide the missing clue that ties it together. Meanwhile I think you're all wrong that it's about homeless people. It has to be about old people who haven't enough to do and spend too much time sitting around public places waiting to die.

Carol

Impressionism.

Nemo

False Impressionism

Philip

False because it doesn't "impress" you?
I don't see what is demonstrably false about the technique regardless of whether you like the result or not.

Nemo