walls
Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 11:03PM I should say this to you
in moonlight,
when there is no such word
as no.
Samuel Peralta
If we find beautiful walls,
from ancient lives,
then those stones gently demonstrate
a painterly line, deceptively simple,
undulating between us.
Impossibly possible, but true,
dividing walls link and hold
any space so close-connected that
a construct must define the two. Strange
I should say this to you.
If we walk there, glancing across
that well-reckoned gap,
sharing the scent of green and
wind and remembering hill forts,
will you smile, even unto the eyes?
A silent turn upon the fading light,
Not sure what lies beyond
and whether swelling darkling hills
might be revealed by touch and sight
in moonlight
If wonders never cease,
And they do not,
(A secret I have recently recovered)
This wall is one of seven sacred marks--
A division of downs, visible from space,
Still rising where it first occurred.
Like skin on skin, borders become us,
Spreading a mortar of honey, if well met.
Wall, a wall, may we rest like the last bird
When there is no such word
If the other part waits at the window
And looks across the sap green hills,
At peace, waiting, watched and watching,
If a now-familiar lineage of hip and eye,
Reflects our linked perfect state to
Trace faint borders on the epidermal flow,
I should say this to you
in moonlight,
when there is no such word
as no.
Reader Comments (3)
Written according to the rules of the Spanish form popular in the late 14th century Spain. The introduction or the "head, is call the cabeza, a borrowed quatrain from a favorite work. The body riffs on the theme or ideas of the cabeza in four ten-line stanzas, with the lines of the cabeza used to conclude each stanza. Lines six and nine must rhyme with the borrowed tenth and the piece ends with the entire borrowed quatrain.
This verse is a tribute to the work of Samuel Peralta, whose delicate clarity and incisive wit allow brilliance to burn with a candescent light. His work and his not-so-gentle nudging inspires me to expand and mature in work and thought.
Oh my God, I am stunned. Stunned and honoured. I am not sure I can comment objectively on the poem now!
The glosa looks deceptively simple, but it isn't. It's sonnet-like in that within its structure there is an incredible freedom to create, but there is that structure! - be it iambic pentameter and Shakespearian rhyme scheme for the sonnet, or in the glosa the responsibility of the poet to the theme, rhythm and meter introduced by the cabeza, the subtle chain of rhymes, and the imposed final lines for each stanza. You've carried it off remarkably well, still maintaining your own unique voice within the imposition of the glosa form and the cabeza. In a final twist, you used the not-necessarily-traditional re-statement of the cabeza at the end, which makes the form even more difficult, but in this case, it all works.
P.K. Page - one of the most accomplished modern practitioners of the glosa - posed it to herself first as a challenge, and then fell in love with the form; it was through her writing that I was first introduced to this form. Later, in writing my own glosa, I find myself in the same position as she... Now this poem of yours - this unexpected, personal gem - has just driven that affection for the form up a notch.
As I said, stunned and honoured. Thank you.
I was happy knowing, once in a while, the angels speak to me. Now I am envious, knowing, they speak THROUGH you ..