So, this is the rewrite of the poem I wrote a few days ago. I have attempted to tidy up the meaning and improve the metre. Have had to lose a rhetorical flourish for the sake of clarity, but I think that is no bad thing. Would love to know what you think. Cheers!
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“Ghosts!? You think a corpse can emanate
across The Void (so empty, dark and wide)
a spectre of past life? Disincarnate?
And why? To act an omen? Be our guide?
Really! No distant world beyond can light
the soulless night – bend nature’s laws – and send
a messenger! This lonely truth is right:
Not one thing lasts beyond its natural end.”
I held my tongue. I could have answered back,
except – a thousand, watchful, pallid eyes
hushed me, glinting from the silent black.
Standing still beneath those star-filled skies
I knew that for each present long-dead sun
I need not speak: Their argument was won.
Copyright (c) Matthew Wingett, 2010
Comments
Like it, haunting, I believe
Author
Boom-tish!
Thank you!
Dear Matt, that was lovely.
It reminded me of my childhood. I used to love watching the stars and remember being very disappointed to discover that some of the far away ones may no longer exist and that their light was just a memorial.
x
Author
Ah, but why disappointed? Isn’t it wonderful to be able to appreciate the beauty of something even after the subject of the image is gone? The sky are like Old Masters perpetuating the beauty of their stars a while longer. Better to think of it that way, than think the other thing: the sky is the graveyard of the stars…
I wasn’t disappointed for long. The same person then told me that there were stars being born all the time, and that if I watched carefully, one may suddenly appear. Not so much a graveyard as a maternity ward.
I sure had a crick in the neck in those days.
x
Author
I like… The cycle of life and death, written in the stars, and all that…