Tuesday 24 February 2015

POETRY JAM - INSIDE LOOKING OUT

“The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.” - Carl Sandburg

Poetry Jam’s prompt this week is “Inside Looking Out” (or vice-versa!) and participants can treat this in a poem literally or figuratively. Here is my contribution. The reference to Sappho is from a surviving fragment of her poetry (Diehl 94 / Voigt 168b / Cox 48):

“Well, the moon has set, and the Pleiades.
It is the middle of the night.
And the hours pass by,
But I sleep alone…”
Sappho (≈630/612 BCE to ≈570 BCE)

Couvre-feu

Moonlight streams into my room
(Ill luck would have me
Forget to draw the curtain tonight).

Outside, the garden
(Cold, frosty,
Silent and forsaken).
Tree branches
(bare, harsh, rapacious)
Clutch at illumined, star-strewn sky.
A sole night bird calls.
The chill, dark air is calm,
The sky so far away,
I know I’ll never reach it.

(Time passes;
The firmament rotates,
Sleep eludes me).

Cold, bright, impassive,
All-knowing moon looks in;
And on my desk Sappho remarks
That by my side
The bed is empty.

16 comments:

  1. I like this very much. I feel the sleepless night here. I like the way you used the parentheses. Thanks for posting!

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  2. sleep does need to impose a curfew on the moon...the sadness at the end touches deeply...a beautiful take on the prompt...

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  3. The world of sleepless nights and new days, time does pass and sometimes it is so slow.

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  4. the outside and the in do not seem that far apart...
    the lone night bird outside...the same inside...
    oy, sleep has been alluding me as well...

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  5. Very cool, Nick. I like what you share as you look outside and the conversation with Sappho over the centuries.

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  6. I enjoyed this little peek into your bedroom ....

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  7. This poem is very evocative, Nick. I deeply feel the presence of the all-knowing moon streaming through the window & can see those bare tree branches very clearly through your words....

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  8. This is truly beautiful Nicholas. Widtful, contemplative. A fine entry,

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  9. This is truly beautiful Nicholas. Widtful, contemplative. A fine entry,

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  10. Nicholas,

    Almost a sense of voyeurism about the moonlight, as it peers into your night scene...Amazing how we can be disturbed and at times comforted, by the very same light...A mood moment perhaps!

    Eileen

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  11. Very intimate and beautifully portrayed :)

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  12. This is just beautiful. In your last (and outstanding) stanza, I understood. Wow. I didn't really see it coming. Top notch!

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  13. Beautifully penned! I love the way, you end it.

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  14. Oh! That's painful.
    Only moonlight for company then...

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  15. Absolutely gorgeous poem, Nicholas! Very melancholy last verse...

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  16. Beautiful poem. Expresses the absence of the beloved wonderfully.

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