Language & Grammar discussion

Seconds float like bubbles
From the ticking-clock trickle of perpetual rain.
Oh, one preparatory strain, soft-filed,
Bears down to sprout good by meter;
It’s just free, wet air growing, breathing green,
Like some prophetic, unsigned bed of blood ash.

Whey, fallen, feeding into grained gold
Planted in sandy plain, planted in red ballast,
It is milk squeezed, cupped and spilled —
Still spilling from tufted clouds,
In pace with the puffy eyes
Death to them always seems to bring —
Spilled by tragically irrelevant men that, weeping,
pray to stay still some spite
Of the Nazarite son¬¬ of God given life forever,
Like an undone gun, like a bullet unshot,
Unchambered and unloaded.
Oh, following those ahead,
All these men will be followed, and
Will chase my last sighing smile before
The devil shouts “Fire!”
(Andersonville, 1864)


Droplets ticking upon the deadline
In my sweat, and then — “Fire!” — in a bloody trill,
And I am left to nurse the skin-toned dust,
To quench its leather thirst,
But, alas, I am already gone
Beyond the reach of time
To those cottony billows of directionless moments
To watch rain pour like sand from an hourglass.

Months may make the hills blush ivy,
Or let the valleys flood by sheets that shred
The city streets and soak ill-timed parades,
Ruining artisan toys already outgrown
By sons of sons soon to be fathers’ fathers,
While endless springs flow gently the drink of life
To fall in pools like a thousand little country basins,
When our souls have risen to fill the clouds of heaven.
(Forever on)

hmmm
whitman
cummings
snyder
that sing songy guy who did the poem about winter
maybe even a little sandberg
what's his face-ginsberg

need to read it when my brain is functioning
but you are a crafty poet
thanks for posting

Whitman? Because of Andersonville and the Civil War allusion, you mean? Cummings... hmn. And I don't know Snyder. The other bergs, yes. But in any event, some arresting moments and turns of phrase here that I like, such as the simile set: "Like an undone gun,/ like a bullet unshot,/ Unchambered and unloaded." Alliteration at work in other places, too.

My only problem is that I don't entirely get it. Where's the L&G Poetry Wizard when you need her?