Life And Death
 

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Life And Death


It’s just before dawn,
my tea is lukewarm,
and around my lamp
a nameless horde
of self-exhausting
insects swarm.

All wing, they are,
their bodies spare,
impatient husks
consumed by flight,
by brilliance drawn
to swift nowhere.

They spin, then drop,
like tick from tock,
settling down
invisibly
upon this page,
a ghostly flock.

At last, they rest.
I take a breath,
exhaling them
from here to there,
from then to now,
defying death.


(16 March, 2007—Petulu, Bali—)
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Nothing's perfect. But every so often, even less than that, a poem comes along that is more than perfect. This is more than perfect. It is a marriage of skillness and stillness. It is pure pleasure to hover wingless over this.
Thanks Nemo.


(Ha! I just noticed the time and place and it became animated in that time and place. )

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Or in other words, I think it's good.
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I especially like how this winds to the end. How the insects eventually land on the page. It has a classic feel, like a poem from the 17th century. A strong meditation on death and the dizziness of life.

It's good.

I'd say that "to swift nowhere" is in the range of a signature move of yours, and I think it would be good to try to avoid it. Yes, I understand how it's a very wonderful line, but it also feels like it comes too easily for you. It is also the kind of thing that far less skilled poets throw around less wonderfully. They are the ones who popularize it.

RM

It's quite good, Nemo. There's something delicious about the sheer size of the title and the slenderness of the poem.

Hope this helps.

I agree that the poem is very strong, and perhaps I am commenting premarturely since I tend to like your poems more and more when I read them, even if I have quibbles and reservations on first reading. So here are some of the quibbles and reservations that occur to me and might disappear without further ado as I read the poem more.

Love the first stanza. No quibbles.

In S2, I do like the sound of "swift nowhere," but I also get the feeling that "swift" isn't really meaning anything. It sounds good, and feels very poetic, but is perhaps a bit too poetically glib. Also, I'm not sure what the "brilliance" is that is drawing them, given that it all takes place just before dawn, when it's always darkest.

In S3, the word "invisibly" bothers me a bit. The four syllables seem too quick compared, say, to "impatient husks," and the mouth-feel perhaps isn't crisp enough. The whole phrase "settling down/ invisibly / upon this page" seems to lack to crispness of language that the rest of the poem delivers. Also, "invisibly" doesn't contribute much in terms of meaning, since I didn't expect them to be visible in the first place, and you end the stanza with a far better phrase to express that, "ghostly flock." In place of "invisibly," perhaps there is a less obvious adverb that can contribute more?

In S4, you're exhaling them but I didn't know that you had inhaled them in the first place. Also, if you're going from "then to now," would it make sense to also go from "there to here"? They seem to be pulling in opposite directions.

There's something about this - a working within tight constraints (similar, but not identical) - that reminds me of Edward Thomas's "Out in the Dark" ... http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/c...ions/item/2930

It seems to me a moment of extreme introspection, captured well.

I did just wonder about the exhaling of the insects.

Cheers

David

I love how each stanza opens with a slant rhyme, and then closes with that perfect rhyme. It's almost like a correction, a righting of direction. Little lifts each time, which I think matches the beautiful closing gesture.

Roger, I don't think the speaker ever literally inhales them. The speaker takes a breath, and when he/she exhales, that's what it looks like. I think that the leap there is wonderful, and part of the magic of the poem. And I see the "then to now" as a kind of return ("defying death"). Terrific, inspirational work, Nemo.

Strong form. Strong poem.