The Third Way
They say when a baby cries
You should let it shudder alone
Until all its tears have gone,
So that it learns independence.
But when I hear the hopeless
Retching of the world I am like
An untrained mother in distress,
Watching pensive by the cradle
While the neighbours close their ears,
Or beat the walls for silence.
How can I comfort if
I cannot claw it all towards me,
Hug the universe too tightly,
Crush it to my chest until it
Gasps for breath and pulls
Away, saying, ‘hold me gently’?
the untrained mother metaphor works well. i get a good sense of the persona's persona. i get the feeling it's working towards something it doesn't quite reach though, possibly because it ends in a question. i'm also unsure what the layout of 'ears' gives the poem. also, not sure whether shifting to 'universe' in the last stanza works or whether 'cradle' ought to be used (obviously there's the baby metaphor but perhaps cradle is too specific). the neighbours stuff is excellent, i'm big on that! overall it's coool!
ReplyDeleteThanks for those comments - very helpful. It did originally have another stanza, but it wasn't going where I wanted so I lopped it off to sit with it like this for a while. Maybe I'll go back and do some more work on that...
ReplyDeleteGood point about universe - it's amazing the things you realise you haven't thought about when you think you've thought about *everything*! Once again a testament to the value of getting comments from others on one's work...
Thanks :)