Skip to main content

WUSTL Life-Lines (4/13/20)

Prompt

Write a short poem (rhyming not necessary) that includes each of the following 5 words (anywhere and in any order). Poems should not exceed 7 or 8 lines.
     Star
     Stairway
     Memory
     Hour
     Light
***
a pathway of pebbles at night,
memory’s labyrinth of light
reaches a dark star
through an hour ajar
and a heretical power
ascends subterranean
staircases to the heart.
— James B. Moog

Many thanks to Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo who did me the great honor of surprising me with a Spanish translation which I prefer greatly to the original English:

Senda de guijarros nocturnos:
la luz laberíntica de la memoria 
rebasa a la estrella oscura 
de esta hora entreabierta. 
Entonces una fuerza herética
asciende las escaleras sumergidas 
que dan directo a nuestro corazón.

-James B. Moog

Finally, I couldn't help submitting another poem anonymously:

Ambiguous light falls upon
an unsuspecting hour.
Memory, that silver star, refuses
her curtain calls. I am
enchanted by a spiral stairway—
shadow play
before and beneath it—
and a single candle.

Poems submitted for April 13

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Man of Sorrows: Ishmael and Melville’s Misericord

The Man of Sorrows: Ishmael and Melville’s Misericord He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. -Friedrich Nietzsche,  Beyond Good and Evil The autonomous individual does not treat his own conclusions and decisions as authoritative but chooses with his eyes open, and then keeps his eyes open.    He has the courage to admit that he may have been wrong even about matters of the greatest importance. -Walter Kaufmann,  Without Guilt and Justice              This paper will examine Melville’s democratic tragedy as a call for fellow feeling in the face of man’s insuperable longing for wholeness and universal suffering (Milder 23). Specifically, I will examine  Moby-Dick  in relation to the concept of misericord: a unique form of sympathy, associated with heartfelt commiseration, as well as mercy, compassion, pity, and charity.    “In the teachings of the Christian churches, charity