an old marl-hole where rat-bats congregatebears quiet witness to each hidden sinnot just to what we could not dare to winby dint of effort and so blame on fatethis is no church for you to desecratebut a dark place where many lives beginand those who know will just conceal a grinfor nouns not verbs would seem to conjugatethat was the story when the night turned coldunder a sky as dark as any soulwhen all the blame was placed on certain wilesbut others said the cause was merely goldunwisdom aiming at a pretty goalthat journey will not end for many miles
19 October 2008
beside the limestone road
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2 comments:
what a great first line! This needs to go on, don't you think? Another verse or two? Too many things still titillating...
Thanks, Pam. I think that it says all I want it to say for now. The form, after all, constrains the story to be brief and allusive -- more in the readers' heads than on the page. When I start, I'm sometimes not sure what form the poem is going to take; in this case, the words shaped themselves naturally into a sonnet out of the memory of something said to me nearly forty years ago, reinforced by the memory of going into another quarry and disturbing the sleep of the fruit-bats inside.
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