the heavens like a brilliant can opener
and all of everything has burst
out of the wide, jagged gap
in a kaleidoscope of junked cars and windmills,
and apple cores, and bags
of mown grass that I remember how
revelation means uncovering.
Apocalypse, too.
What of the world which is the shadow
of the world?
Lift the corners and snap it
like straightening a blanket: underneath
is not the street you live on or the route
you take each morning to work but the rocky
coastline of Patmos creeping
into infinity.
I am really enjoying this. The combination of the everyday objects with the extremely weighty overarching theme is very engaging. Also, the isolation of last line is very effective.
ReplyDeleteHowever, something in the second to last stanza isn't sitting quite right with me. I think I am stumbling due to the lack of punctuation, but the lack of punctuation also works well with the subject matter there, so I can't think of how it could be corrected, I just find it a bit difficult to read.
"Plato believed that to release another person from ignorance despite their initial reluctance was a great and noble thing -- and yet every day he woke up and lived in the world as if it were real." -- Suzanne Buffam, from Placebo
ReplyDeleteThis book was the best thing you ever made me buy.
I really like this poem, but am confused why the non-shadow world would be underneath the shadow world, unless you are suggesting that it really is a blanket, muffling the true world rather than mimesis-ing it. Which would make sense, and maybe let you bring that splitting imagery from the beginning back around -- that the real world breaks through from below, not behind or above.