perdition

that lucid dark
whose light is done
seems all its moons are crescent now

the fallen lark
and hidden sun
their lights are dimmed- and here is how

the Hope that youthful cherubs knew
the gleaming Truth by which they glew
they flew away from his abyss
where bleeding shadows waning hiss

and Love who once with him did dwell
that sacred nymph from yonder dell
she’s gone to live in Eden’s bliss
she’s fled, she’s fled from his abyss

-jwm

Ηχω (Echo)

"That tongue of yours, by which I have been tricked, shall have its power curtailed and enjoy the briefest use of speech." (Hera to Echo. Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.365).

Ηχω

What beckons back is not the word
Of her whose voice I deem sublime:
I call, but repetitions heard
Reveal not Echo’s voice, but mine.



Of the Poem (Background):

Zeus was hardly the god of fidelity, an unfortunate fact his wife Hera became increasingly aware of (especially when it came to his attraction to mountain nymphs). Desiring to catch him in the act of infidelity, Hera attempts to secretly follow Zeus, but Echo (another nymph) would distract her with her attractive voice and attractive stories. When Hera realized this she punished the nymph by stripping away her ability to speak freely. The curse only enabled Echo to repeat the last words spoken by another- hence the name.

The quatrain above indirectly embraces an aspect of the story that is seldom thought about: Echo’s isolation. In it is a voice that calls out to Echo and waits in anticipation for a response. What rings back is an exact- albeit fainter- replication of the voice’s voice. It is Echo, but the conclusion is drawn that she is nowhere to be found, and that the returning voice is a mere repetition of the original call.

The unspoken tragedy of the poem is that it is Echo’s voice beckoning back, returning the call in replications she’s unable to break- replications so convincing, so exact, that the voice concludes the non-existence of a respondent. Her voice- once loved, even cherished by the nymph herself- is now the selfsame voice that produces a deception in its hearers, that keeps Echo forever in isolation. It’s the deception placed on the calling voice- repetitions heard / reveal not Echo’s voice, but mine- that magnify the punishment originally bestow by Hera (creating, as it were, a secondary punishment of eternal isolation).

*****

I have so many isolated stanzas (as I call them) that I have a folder specifically dedicated to them. Ηχω, a simple quatrain, is grouped with these. The stanzas range from heroic couplets to tercets to octets. Each of them have been kept because I felt them to be complete, fully finished poems- this despite the fact that they’re simple stand alone stanzas.

This begs a question: How long must a poem be to be considered a poem? Is there a such thing as ‘too short’ a poem? I’m utterly comfortable calling an isolated couplet a complete poem (especially if it was intended as such). Ezra Pound certainly considered his In a Station of the Metro not only a complete poem, but a highly mature one. A haiku is an exceedingly short poem, and yet contains volumes of poetic imagery (some of the best in the world).

It seems impossible that a single word could constitute a poem; but how about two carefully placed words? John 11:35, the shortest verse in the Bible, has a very poetic feel to it ... yet it's only two words.

As for me, I know internally when I can dub a work of mine as a poem (short or not)- but would that hold true by definition? I guess what my curiosity wants to know is this: What’s the shortest poem ever written; and, how short is too short (if there is such a thing)? Feel free to give an opinion on the matter (short or not).

copyright © 2009

Narcissus*

Narcissus

He viewed afoot a silv’ry lake
And took himself to take a drink-
Then beauty moved his thirsting soul,
As there he bent above the brink.

No mortal flesh this seemed to he
Who marveled at its dear design-
Behold, a face beheld him back,
Whose symmetry was pure divine!

Handsome was the heav’nly sight
That rip’ling lay within the clear;
He touched his finger to its cheek
And wavelets had it disappear.

When agitation placid came
He dared- from love- new love embrace;
But wading through the wat’ry void
Disturbed the beauty of its face.

Again it came, again he touch’d;
Again the figure fluctuates.
Lamenting there aside that bank
He cursed himself and all the Fates:

“What awful light is cast below
That tells me what I see is I:
The boy within the shimm’ring gleam,
‘Tis me, O wretch’d me- but why?”

Then Nemesis who linger’d there,
With fatal judgment in her vest,
Remorseless cast the final lot
Which grew despairing in his breast.

Bereft of love’s requited touch
He pounded moans upon his chest,
And stagg’ring ‘mongst the wind’d reeds
There came by Nyx eternal rest.

His deathbed there’s a thing of woe,
A cautionary tale some fear:
The Naiads, Dryads- all the Nymphs,
Warn self-love grows a flower there.

-jwm


*See comments area for brief background to the poem.

City Naiad

No, she's not me (whose heart is vain)
She's happy where no glades are seen
Whose glades are city-lights and rain
And puddles in the streets unclean

The vagabonds there seem her kin
Who sleep on papers by the mall
In alleys soaked in piss and gin
That shifty crowds don't see at all

She glides ethereal like God
On sullen ground where many’ve died
And seeks about the slum-filled quad
The sacred pools where many've cried

And here within my cozy life
Where heat and food and rest are clean
I think their life just rosy strife
And God forbid the rain as mean

But not so with her honest eyes
That sees by truth those somber sights
Whose tears reflect the raining skies
And all those amber city-lights

-jwm