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- Thread starter CassandraW
- Start date
My apologies for retracting my earlier version of this poem. Forgive me if that's a huge faux pas. I figured since no one had commented, I at least hadn't yanked the rug out from anyone.
If anyone is interested, this was the original:
Before I learned the sky can’t fall
because it isn’t there,
its clear blue gaze and sunset flush
illusions caused by scattered light,
and the sun is just another star
that will consume the earth,
then shrink into an icy rock
drifting in an endless night,
I was cradled in a mighty hand
that nonetheless trembled when I was naughty.
Now I know it isn’t true
but in the dark I turn to you
and cling as though to something
solid and eternal.
(I decided it would be better to keep some meter in the third stanza (making it part of the harmonious universe of my childhood) and just switch it up, give it a bit of a lyrical sound, and join it with a rhyme to the first two stanzas. I also put a little more God into the third stanza. For better or worse, my decision to drop rhyme and meter altogether in the last two lines of both versions is deliberate. In case anyone cares.)
If anyone is interested, this was the original:
Before I learned the sky can’t fall
because it isn’t there,
its clear blue gaze and sunset flush
illusions caused by scattered light,
and the sun is just another star
that will consume the earth,
then shrink into an icy rock
drifting in an endless night,
I was cradled in a mighty hand
that nonetheless trembled when I was naughty.
Now I know it isn’t true
but in the dark I turn to you
and cling as though to something
solid and eternal.
(I decided it would be better to keep some meter in the third stanza (making it part of the harmonious universe of my childhood) and just switch it up, give it a bit of a lyrical sound, and join it with a rhyme to the first two stanzas. I also put a little more God into the third stanza. For better or worse, my decision to drop rhyme and meter altogether in the last two lines of both versions is deliberate. In case anyone cares.)
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I care. 
ETA: I find it an elegant construction to leave off rhyming at the border between Child and Adult mind. Even as you acknowledge the impulse to retreat and System Restore at critical moments.
Your edit is quite lovely...the shorter lines evoke now I lay me down to sleep.
Certainty and uncertainty have squared off nicely here.
ETA: I find it an elegant construction to leave off rhyming at the border between Child and Adult mind. Even as you acknowledge the impulse to retreat and System Restore at critical moments.
Your edit is quite lovely...the shorter lines evoke now I lay me down to sleep.
Certainty and uncertainty have squared off nicely here.
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Yes, I like the revs & the rhymes. Maybe something will occur to you later, instead of something now. Enjoyed reading this!
I like the second version *much* better. I'd prefer some other phrase than "depleting gas", however. I understand the intention to be fully anti-romantic (I think you mean to be there?) but for my sensibilities it goes a little too far.
Thank you all for reading.
Yes, Kyla, "depleting" was in part an attempt to be as unromantic as possible. I'd played with words like "burning", which would certainly sound more poetic, and which would also be accurate. But I wanted to emphasize the lack of permanence and solidity, if that makes sense, and the fact that even now the sun is undergoing its inevitable process of petering out and taking earth with it. In the first stanza, I'd tried to leave in a bit of a pretty, innocent, childish way of seeing the sky; I wanted to remove that in the second stanza to indicate the increasing sense of disillusionment that came with adulthood.
I'll think about whether there's a less clumsy way to accomplish that. I'm not 100% there with this poem, I admit. (I rarely am, alas.)
ETA:
And Westie -- yes, I was trying for a bit of lullaby/nursery lilt in the meter.
Yes, Kyla, "depleting" was in part an attempt to be as unromantic as possible. I'd played with words like "burning", which would certainly sound more poetic, and which would also be accurate. But I wanted to emphasize the lack of permanence and solidity, if that makes sense, and the fact that even now the sun is undergoing its inevitable process of petering out and taking earth with it. In the first stanza, I'd tried to leave in a bit of a pretty, innocent, childish way of seeing the sky; I wanted to remove that in the second stanza to indicate the increasing sense of disillusionment that came with adulthood.
I'll think about whether there's a less clumsy way to accomplish that. I'm not 100% there with this poem, I admit. (I rarely am, alas.)
ETA:
And Westie -- yes, I was trying for a bit of lullaby/nursery lilt in the meter.
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