Clockwork Rose
The hope was for
a congruency,
match of lacelike cogs
each empty space in one filled
by an organic prominence
in the other, turning both
effortlessly in motion,
in the other, turning both
effortlessly in motion,
combined in purpose,
separate, joined.
separate, joined.
Instead two labored
in the workshop where
the scarlet rose peels her petals;
only one came out
seized, tangled and twined,
disambiguated, jammed
mechanism clanking, to fall finally in the rusting wind,
scrap and dead leaves.
July 2011
"in the rusting wind"
ReplyDeletestriking imagery that fits the rest of the poem so perfectly! your labels are better than my poetry! {smile}
He who lives on hope has a thin diet. So I've heard, anyway.
ReplyDeletevery fine texture to this...made me think of the old packet watch my grandpop gave me...it is seized now...a sad end as i hear the grind and fall at the end...
ReplyDeleteHerein lies the hope of every relation, love and beloved, mother and child , I and Thou enmeshed in one perfect watchwork, perfect as our perfection-haunted minds envisage: Yet nature is too frequently stillborn, mutated, or disastrous, natural selections altered in course by the cosmic commedia. Who can say why? The wonder is that union happens at all, for better or worse. I just wonder what happened to the unmentioned other in this poem -- a perfect other, or fellow, though less holocaustically impaired? -- Brendan
ReplyDeleteThanks all. This one decided to write itself just before bed last night.
ReplyDelete@FB Yeah, but people live on it. I had that quote in one of my notebooks--It's from one of the medieval tellings of Tristan and Isolde; "For hope in the heart of man lives on lean pasture."
@brian yes, that's the feeling here.
@B: The wonder is indeed, that union happens at all. Yet perhaps that's what makes it both so desired and so amazingly good when it does. The fate of the other in this poem is to be eaten, I'm afraid, with the best case scenario being some composting as one of the dead leaves.
Beautiful, both words and image.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sherry.
ReplyDeletethis feels like someone sitting down and looking back at a relationship - analyzing from the distance why it ended up the way it ended up...i was captured by the images and touched by the sadness
ReplyDeleteWhat carries some through the hard work, into something like congruency? It really is a wonder.
ReplyDeleteThis is an intriguing combination of textures, of metal clanging and organic leaves decaying. How like the world, and the world of relationships. Lovely poem.