Calligraphy,
What a poem for the current zeitgeist! Very powerful with the collective images. (Now I’m feeling embarrassed that I said I hope you’ll post when you already did, but I hadn’t seen it yet.) I like the way it completes the circle at the end. It’s so entirely different than most poems, in a number of ways, nothing excessive, it hits the reader with this spare directness. Also I feel its arrangement is somehow chiastic. The middle stanza is like a fulcrum, “who’s looking down on you” – this stanza nailed what I feel about this moment in time. There’s a sense of surveillance and things dark and hidden going on we can’t yet see, but it’s happening. The first and the last sections are like yin and yang – the first section introduces the feel of what’s happening as a kind of crescendo. I love “Etna blows smoke rings” - starting each line with “when” tells us this is a critical moment in time. It’s in the mode of warning, a prophecy, has a sort of biblical feel. Then the final section brings light: “but you can see straight through” - all this is good.
My only question is about the final lines beginning with “so the moon hands it over to you” - it’s not clear to me what “it” is - everything was building up to this point. I don’t mean explanations, it’s that the logic of the last 4 lines escapes me, except the part about the knight. It feels like at that critical juncture, I missed something. For all I know it could be a single word or could be a change. I like the sense of action, but it’s only a sense. I feel it needs more connection to the rest, the end feels like it’s close but the connection I feel needs to be stronger to give the knight more meaning - but I may change my mind. The sunlight does connect to the moon, so I’m thinking I probably should give it time. I will come back. So glad to see you here! Much to love about this poem, sometimes endings just need finagling.
Arrow———-> xox (when I write xo, my phone says “do”!)
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