Wow!!!: I haven't been on much lately, but this is amazing! Your writing has advanced soooo much! It was alway great, but you are in the stratosphere now Excellent write!!!
S1 brings the image of an: S1 brings the image of an outside world "eavesdropping" on a loving couple and an admiring almost envious kind of way.
S2 Their sustenance an all encompassing experience that "greens the desert" that surrounds them.
S3 Their "lovemaking" a beacon and sustaining brilliance that births new life and composes new songs.
S4 All the while intimacy while observable always is and always will be reserved to the two parties made one.
Our love expressed and lived exemplifies and empowers, young love, that is. Fleeting yet overpowering.
This delicate wonder: This delicate wonder demonstrates the very elegance you describe.
I'm awed by the stunning vastness of thought conveyed in glorious simplicity, in fine-woven contemplation, and truly humbled that I could have had any part in this reflection. You are greatly appreciated for your cherished contributions here; your superior talent, insight, knowledge and encouragement means more to me (and many others) than you know.
Be blessed, Valued Poet, beyond your wildest dreams.
Your skill with metaphor: Your skill with metaphor always amazes me. I applaud the way you use local weather conditions and an ordinary sunrise, to convey emotional meaning; and not only that, but also the hope of positive changes.
"I’ve got to get so far past: "I’ve got to get so far past you the birds run out of breath.
I need to push you to the utmost of unimportants that the dust turns to dirt"
Killer lines here! You've got the gift of being relatable, sharp and golden in your delivery.
Real art.
Like intricate lace and: Like intricate lace and sumptuous music, your deep reflections on the rarest, highly evolved love takes more than casual appreciation. You analyze, contemplate, then articulate something that most mere mortals cannot do justice to, being the unifying force of all creation, or as you immortalized it in astonishing poetics:
"Their wine and their bread are a true sacrament,
Lending sanction to the world's existence.
Each caress stimulates a world lying in rubble"
And:
"The earth sings at each embrace, rivers flow
Into valleys-from the chambers of their hearts."
And finally, practically unparalleled in its artistic agility:
" . . . their blood
Is an infusion for a world in perpetual requiem"
It doesn't seem necessary to add more ornaments of praise to this wonder. Its towering worth speaks for itself.
I'm enjoying the thread on: I'm enjoying the thread on this poem as much as the work itself! You invited an open-ended dialogue of intelligent reflection, instruction and personal experience that resonates beautifully. That's art as well! Thank you for your uplifting response.
I cannot resist making a: I cannot resist making a second comment. This is the kind of poem one reads, and then re-reads again and again, for several reasons: the beauty and elegance of its conversational tone, which has a very subtle swerve into the evocative; sheer admiration for the Poet who can write such verse; the originality and very unusual uniqueness of the various phrase of which the poem is constructed. Because I am an old man, in ppor health, I have to take afternoon naps; and having awakened, I wanted to visit this again just to make sure I had not dreamed it; and, most blessedly, I did not dream it---it is a real poem (perhaps I should write that as REAL POEM), and really has been posted to the best poem site on the entire internet.
I am not exaggerating in any: I am not exaggerating in any way when I state here that, after fifty years (as of last month) of reading Poetry, and over twenty-seven years of writing it, this particular poem is one of the finest Love poems I have ever read. It speaks to the soul in metaphors about love---and presents those meanings in the most poetic language. I am actually struggling, here, to articulate my response to the poem; struggling because the intensity of my response is outrunning the ability of my words to express it. Very few poems affect me in this way. In fact, I am going to brag about this poem to others. This poem deserves a whole lot of attention; it also deserves to be visited more than once, and you can count on my revisits.
Thank you for those kind: Thank you for those kind words. I am, in some ways, ashamed to realize that I, in my adolescence, was wholy unable to enter into the kind of maturity that djtj obviously demonstrated by retaining her notebook of adolescent poems. I was too full of myself to understand that any Poet has natural enemies---time, circumstances not conducive to poems---and also, as in my case, a couple of loved ones (in my case, my parents, first and foremost) intent on sabotoging ot undermining the effort. And when, at college, a very pleasantly provocative voice advised me to throw away my first two bundles of poems because "you can do better," I was so flattered that I did not consider that the loss was greater than the gain. (That same voice attempted, later, to persuade me to abandon my then identity as Starwatcher for a more mundane and conformable name.) So, paradoxically, the advise I have offered to young Poets is advise I was not smart enough to come up with when I needed it. Thinking that some young person might be in the same situation that i was, I hoped that perhaps these ten points might give a useful intervention to Poets, like I was---whose immaturity is a pitfall to their aspirations.
Wallace Stevens once wrote---I forget where---that, in his old age, he took more comfort in the poems he didn't finish, or even begin, than the poems that he had published. And I believe he said this after the double triumph of the Colleced Poems and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The poems I allowed to be destroyed comfort me because their DNA (if I may make the metaphor) is in the poems I have posted here. In 1978, when I tossed two hundred or so pages down the interior dumpster at my dorimtory, North Hall, I would never have imagined the five thousand poems that Jason and PostPoems have allowed me to post here.
There is a real paradox about mistakes: they seem embarrassing (or worse); they have made me look a fool (or worse); and they intrude at the most inopportune time. Yet, like some of my college professors with whom I did not get along (gosh, imagine that!), they still did their best to teach me something.
OK, I am getting full of myself again, so I will close this with my sincere thanks and appreciation for your time to read the poem and to comment upon it. Over three years ago, random browsing brought me to your Poetry, and you are amd have been a tremendous blessing, and a very splendid example, in my life.
Thank you for your comment,: Thank you for your comment, and for responding point by point---what you have written is instructive to anyone else who reads the poem. When I read djtj's adolescent poems that she shared with us on PostPoems, I felt ashamed of myself for failing to have her level of maturity when I, too, had been that age. I did not protect my poems, or defend them from loss. Djtj's example also reminded me of the example of the great Greek Poet, Comstantine Cavafy, who maintained a modest apartment in Alexandria, Egypt where he worked for the British colonial authority as a clerk in the Department of Irrigation. One whole room of the already small residence was devoted to his manuscripts (he mostly self published by making copies of his poems, binding them in clips or folders, and giving them to a select circle of friends and acquaintances). He was smart enough to retain his early poems, even though he was mostly ashamed of them. But I did not become familiar with his work until well into my adult years, so his example was not available to me at the time I needed it. As I thought of djtj's example, I decided to admit my early folly and write it down so that it might (I pray, sincerely) be of use to some adolescent, like I once was, who is a little overwhelmed by what this thing called being a Poet really is. I am sorry that I did not really realize these things until I was past middle age. But it makes sense within the pattern of my life---as I am always a day late and a dollar short on most things. I am very, very glad that God cares for the eleventh hour folks as much as for the first hour folks, because I seemed to have built my entire existence on the eleventh hour.
Thanks again for the comment.
Patricia is blessed with all: Patricia is blessed with all around versatility. And thank youi for your input which is always welcome and always coveted.