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The Whippoorwills
Torn from the lucid whippoorwills,
torn from the angular flocks of jade,
torn are the frightened market calls
and the wooden booths of silk and fog.
Under the sheltered lake and frosted jetties,
under the florid green mask,
the peddlers pull, with sirens and whale-song,
their promises in cards and
fasting scribbles.
We listen to the asphalt grinding,
to the locks of mortared lives
reaching the broken-faced ends
of terrible novels and magazines.
Unbirthed plagues of nominal marriage,
rebirth, calling, culling back the silken scarves,
fitting into lapping heather fields, the ivory climb
into languishing hills.
All torn from the lucid whippoorwills.
Somewhere calls the lady star,
lifting the undead poets, the undead painters.
A resurrection floats the solvent
leaking melted hands by twos and by tens,
the insolent scratching
and pouring of thunder down the throat.
Stand in these times of broken fingers,
of lore and scandal rolling through
fur and dust,
heaviness laughing, able-bodied thrills
and the late-night madness and pain,
torn from the lucid whippoorwills.
4 comments:
absolutely lovely. only thing that bothers me is the initial use of "torn three times in a row and "under" twice in a row. Fresh language. Lovely images. Progression. I also wonder where the "we" comes from. An unselfconscious poem then the author seems to interject a "me and you" us kind of universality in the middle of it. This rocks for me!
To me it is too abstract. Where are the whippoorwills? How have they made these effects? Do they live in the backyard while a marraige suffers? The first stanzas are floral as cheap perfume. I wouldn't have read on if this was in a book.
I think it just sounds angsty, and it doesn't move out of that angsty mood to take the piece anywhere.
This is cool! The early repetition of torn tends to draw one into the poem. Tearing the "lucid" (excellent word choice here), onomatopoeic call from the whippoorwill in the first line allows that call to echo through the rest of the piece. The repetition of that first line later, and its use as the final line, becomes quite effective.
And, the powerful, semi-surrealistic phrases (like "asphalt grinding," and the "pouring of thunder down the throat") effectively colors foreboding, apocalyptic tone of the piece.
I also like the way each line pulls you into the next. Excellent.
And, on a related note check out "Call of the Whippoorwill at Twilight" by Margie Riddle Bearss:
http://battleofchampionhill.org/vignettes/whippoorwill.htm
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