Billions and billions;
And yet, if there's too much light
All ends in big crunch.
Anyways... let's see... it's a while since I tried that sprung meter thing; I like trimeter, so let's see, what can we do?
The Weight of Light
Hast seen the Sun's Anvil
The desert's deadliest plain
Where Lawrence's hard will
Bedouin led by night
To Aqaba, with Turks' blood
Sand so clean to stain?
Even i'the Sun's core,
Though packed, the ions hot
Know each the others not
Except that messengers of light
Amongst them swiftest soar.
Time they do not keep
--- Not unto themselves:
In this like Arda's Elves;
Around them still it seeps,
It ripples blue or red.
Ponder not too heavily
this I have here writ:
Yet if thou, underfoot,
Glass shards crunch to grit
Think of the light thus loosed,
Unlock'd windward or lee,
Or falls, to die, on soot.
I know most of the impromptuness is lost in the blog/post/read sequence, but trust me, I've not putting much editing into this. Or maybe my saying so is entirely superfluous?
6 comments:
dear Belfry Bat --
Wow! You've written a poem that, even in the modest scope of rhymed trimeter, is far more ornate and vivid than anything one could have expected or hoped for! (And I like the haiku, too.)
I'm afraid that my prompts were rather flippant, or at least ill-matched: "crunch" and "What is the weight of light?" The weight of the word "light" is, well, lighter, than that of the word "crunch."
But again, bravo!
+JMJ+
I like it, too! =D I'd like it much better, of course, if I didn't have a cold right now. ;-)
The little haiku is also fun. I think it would have done brilliantly in a pinch!
I remember thinking, when Dylan sent in these prompts, that "crunch" was a word I wouldn't have minded getting, and "What is the weight of light?" one of the coolest questions ever . . . but that I probably didn't want them together . . . unless I felt like writing a poem inspired by My Little Pony. (Don't ask; blame the cold.) But you, Bat, have done a great job in making the prompts look as if they really belong together!
(Man, am I outclassed at this! But then I like Kipling and Robert Service.....)
This is awesome, in that it inspires me with awe!
I hope the awe is mostly at the strangeness of Creation itself, about which I could say several other nifty things indeed! For instance: all the solid things you can see (wood, bricks, glass) are held together by light; there are two other effects that hold them up, one of which is also mediated by light; the other is more fundamentally quantum mechanical. You can see, the whole is ripe for versification!
It's funny, Dylan, that once I'd started writing I thought of that famous dark-room-and-mirror demonstration of triboluminescence; (which I've tried, but never managed to work properly...). Just about everyone agrees something similar should be going on in different bands of the spectrum when you're breaking any crystal; and once I'd set down the capture of Aqaba, I had this picture of marching over flats of salt and gypsum, going "crunch, crunch" all the way...
Enbrethiliel, I was sorry to hear about your awful cold. I hope you get over it before it runs you out!
That's one of the things, eh, about W&Q; the pairings are what they are. You don't tune them at all, do you? (when everyone is on time properly, that is?)
If this is your poetry with very little editing, I'd hate to read your poetry with quite a bit of editing! Actually, maybe I would--even though I am an editor, I am also a writer, and I know how editing can sometimes take away the raw beauty of a work. And this is, of course, all to say that I am completely blown away. I love it. Love, love, love, love, love.
I'm impressed at your offhand shot. I am firmly convinced that revision destroys whimsy, but that's probably because I'm lazy.
Post a Comment