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aporeo - 19:10 on 17 II 2004

sol occidit - 23:29 on 13 I 2004

meminisse haec iuvabit - 11:47 on 16 XII 2003

quiesco - 20:31 on 08 XI 2003

alchera mortuast - 14:40 on 01 X 2003
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oddcellist

28 III 2003 - 22:20 - verba45

new

No spare time in general combined with a variety of alternately fun and stressful projects combined with my usual test readers either being away or engaged in the same stressful projects means I don't post Alchera projects until very late. And that's all that needs to be said about that (although I must remind myself to go back and change all the links -- we've moved again!)

I think these no wonderful effort but as with everything I've posted here they are a work in progress. With time they may yet become better (as the Poetry Fairy comes down, shakes her wand three times, and -- voila! -- good poetry ensues. There is, I think, a great deal of mystery involved.)

But to remove some of that mystery, my assignment:

POETRY/OPTION NO. 2:

Write two poems: one about the greatest loss you've suffered, and the other about the greatest gain you've achieved. Keep the style of the poems uniform so they read as a pair. Oh, and one last thing: you must use one word in both poems (i.e., same word in each poem) that you, to your best recollection, have never used before.


no title, not even a working one.

I

He of whom my memories
are games of Scrabble and his pipe
would smile to feel upon his tongue
the words I never gave him:
geminate, arroyo, cwm,
foreign in a foreign land
of scrub-brush soil and desert heat.

His casket taught me dutied tears,
sorrow's shape, the hard dry road
that yields the last and narrow house,
the burning throat and sting of grief:

That lesson learnt, his blurring face
refuses resolution, grants
shadow, guilt, oblivion.
Was this shade, or is he not,
my grandfather --
who was, and is no more?

II

Was this forseen -- the path I'd find --
along the course of letters and lines?
From weakling steps of infant mind
to claims on books as first of friends
the dance has been by scenic route.
(Szymborska's gentle deer of words
peered out from thickly wooded cwms --
I went to stroke her, and she shied.)

Beauty eluded me in the flesh
but could be pursued in verbal form.
And what I learned of song
was arma virumque cano,
what I learned of visions
the cruelty of April to old age.

And with these lessons sometimes learnt
and stern unyielding gods before --
was this forseen, the pride I'd find
to try weak blows, and blunt myself,
upon that much-struck forge of minds?

old

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