The world does not hold together;
judge it as a ship that were but papered-over debris,
break-up the broken, weathered
parts, take a stand in the fractures:
fasten anchors to some of the wreckage
and let us call the sails a parachute; capture
what might still be fitted at the seams,
and the parachute to the remains we’ll tether,
burn rejected wood for lift, and sail towards undreamt dreams.
The ship-parts sign a world (in metonymic verse):
the captain was always a churl (we’ll sink his cabin first);
the lovely stowaway girl would tend the sails (while full of mirth);
the well-powdered inspector annexed the rudder (can our anger take it back?);
the cook, wasteful with his store of provisions, should not be given slack.
The penniless gambler, thirsting for the game, won’t loosen his grip on our legs;
spilled, the silk-crates we’d both admire spiral down to the dregs.
The purser who paid so to stay and flay the slaved, has not remained (likely afraid);
we’ve radio’d command, who now air-drops food (but cannot send other aid).
Trunks of cargo drift apart, we can’t straddle them all, but cast
our lots and stand on just a couple, while sun-kissed skin peels, dead.
Things of our lives are only loosely-bundled driftwood log-rafts;
decide between warring affections and passions: kiln these in your head.
“Kiln these in your head.”
^ Everything flowed just brilliantly, then THIS. Nice work, Gregory. Very nice.
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Coming from you, Mr. Poetry, that’s high praise, indeed! So glad you liked it. :-)
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You brought to mind, this:
The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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I’m flattered that I could call Yeats to mind!
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