Echo

 

I really enjoy the poetry of Victorian-era poet Christina Rossetti. I do love rhyming poetry, and Christina is able to use rhyme with a seductive and endearing effect. Much of romantic poetry is about the loss of love and the re-living of this loss via memories and dreams.  It is by these memories that love is re-born again in the poets mind. The title of Christina’s poem, Echo, is interesting. At first it doesn’t really make sense, but in looking more closely at the poem, it begins to reveal meaning.

Dreams are a way of momentarily re-living a previous experience.  An echo recaptures the sound of the original object, just as a mirror reflects back an original image.  In this way, she is describing how in dreams we may re-capture lost love. She does this with an interesting use of rhyming patterns. Memory echoes her previous experiences and so to demonstrate this she uses the same words over again in repetition, like an echo.

It is only in one’s memory that past experiences are given reality, even if they are only echoes of memory. Therefore the rhyming words and repetition go hand in hand to form the core meaning of the poem which vividly demonstrates how the meaning of an echo is also a metaphor for the re-capturing of lost love.

I enjoy the sentiment of this poem because the overall theme is one of yearning and regret. It is a theme that is near and dear to my heart and I have tried to capture that sentiment in many of my poems, most recently, my poem, “And Still I dream”.

 

Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the sparkling silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.

Petals

Sometimes when I read poetry I feel an instant connection with the poet. It is like their thoughts are yours or at least you are able to identify immediately with the sentiments of their poetry. That is why I love poetry so much.

No two poets are ever alike and what is fascinating and enjoyable to you may not be to another individual. Like two snowflakes, none is the same as the other.

One of my favourite poets is Amy Lowell. Her words are often simple but there is real truth there amongst simple words and sentiments.  And sometimes what is simple and genuine is what is remembered most often. There is beauty in simplicity. Here is her poem, “Petals”.

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Amy Lowell

The meaning of life in nine syllables…

Metaphors

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

-Sylvia Plath

“A melon strolling on two tendrils”. What an absurd image and yet it cannot stop us from envisioning such a picture in our mind, primarily because such an endeavoring is contrary to the laws of nature.  A near impossibility as the laws of physics dictates to us and yet we appreciate the incongruence of the words.  Why?

I believe it is human nature to chuck convention and embrace chaos and the unknown. If we hadn’t as a species, then mankind would not have evolved into its plethora of mysterious complexities. The number nine coincides with nine months and denotes pregnancy, becoming a metaphor for birth. The birth of creativity and all things that remain possibilities on earth.

And so it would seem that even miracles are possible. And the only vehicle to make that happen is the human mind. Seat of all consciousness, director of our lives and fortunes, but what happens when the director is in absentia? What happens when all that is left is the simple fragment of your soul and the memory of what it was to be alive?

In Absentia

You make a slow mad rush

towards my slouched

appearance,

A kind of salute

to your silent approach.

You raid me

as a dog might

with endless pawing,

alerting me to your

existence.

Yet there is nothing simple in the delights

that amuse.

If only we could find such happiness

in simple things.

Yet what is simple? 

For your eyes have dimmed and the light

that once questioned

with mirth,

what is the meaning of life?

Has now fled.

Your light,

in absentia

from your soul

has faded,

As footsteps do

in the heavy snow

that blankets 

unwhispered words

of lost compassion.  

Your story has lost meaning

in this dictum of life.

What of the number of stars in heaven?

Angels keepsakes,  

The likes of which only bibles

and other constructs of humanity 

may dictate to us,

Becoming only

a memoir,

that is lost in translation.

But always remember,

As a child of your heart

with wings aloft

in the wellspring of your soul,

I will always remember you.

And you will always be

and forever shall be,

Blessed,

beyond what can be understood,

As a father may be

to a son

who never lived.