06-26-2016, 11:59 PM
(06-26-2016, 11:50 PM)dukealien Wrote: Wind Passes
Who has a thing to say about the wind?
To old-time sailors driving, shifting force;
it made excuse for lovers who had sinned, No need for a comma?
then called each other feathers blown off-course.
Today we see mere random particles
with wind their average speed, direction, scent,
arrest its gusts in windmill manacles
to power each home’s snug establishment.
But wind’s inconstant, fleeting as desire -
what leads us to prefer its fickle flow
to take the place of coal’s pent saffron fire,
a racing rush displacing steady glow?
We’ll have our breezy flutter but return
to hard-mined coal and constancy’s long burn. I'm pretty sure you have something much deeper in here, but right now the environmentalist/naturalist/really, humanist in me writhes with this ending, so much so that I can't actually get into that something deeper. Gosh dang, the poem almost made me shout to the speaker to get an education ---------- although maybe the title gives a clue? I really didn't expect a tonally serious pome with that title.
But really, I'd appreciate its message, if fundamentally not anti-environment, if it had handled its message with a wee bit more, er, panache -- say, wind is fickle, so coal is better, the smoke be damned! the world's damned anyway, or what have you. But really, considering the poem's current airs, as inconstant as the wind may be, the world itself becomes much more inconstant (and with an unnatural quickness, too) with that hard-mined coal, and ultimately without said panache, the piece just comes off to me as irresponsible. Yes, poets can and should write about anything they want, but in their works they should at least be shown, even through hints, as knowledgeable, as knowing and considering everything first and just picking a side. But again, the first paragraph: maybe the writhing's just distracting me.
(If only this were just an engineering matter!)