In general, I like this, although the simplicity of the first part clashes with the prerequisite of familiarity with King Lear as things go on. Can't the storm and the identity crisis have their own power, without Shakespeare's celebrity endorsement? What Would John Riley Do?
And I don't see that the meter's absolute implosion in the last five lines is in any way an asset to the reader's experience of the poem. Unless you are trying to make a point that the wind's voice is less rhythmic than the speaker's, or than the background patter of the rain. But I find it less effective than the hypnotic cadence of what came before, and the poem ends for me five lines after the magic ended.
The wrong-footing in L4 seems unnecessary, too:
though I'm as shred-emptied & cleansed as its sky
>>>
although I'm as emptied & cleansed as its sky
(Yeah, I know, you're probably in love with "shred-emptied." I'm not, for the predictable, pedestrian reason that I can't figure out what it means, when I'm already feeling curmudgeonly about having wrong-footed the meter on the first attempt.)
|