and then He created the horse...

and then He created the horse...

Thanks, everyone, for your response.  If this poem is too confusing, it's entirely my fault... I have a horrible habit of being overly vague, because I'm so frightened of being far too obvious.  Your comments are reassuring, though.

Serenity Blaze:  Capitalization is a form thing.  Leaves always means pieces of paper, but I was trying to give the impression of violation so I wanted something living ("leaves") instead of paper.  "Slicing" leaves is turning the pages of a book, which is really only "slicing" in the sense that they are so condensed until they open them.

Martie:  Always the naturalist!  I've said this before, but I'm an allegorical poet (in that my images are secondary to my concepts), and you're a symbolic poet (in that your conclusions proceed from sensual experiences you have).  Believe me when I say I wish I could write symbolic poetry like you do, but I live in a cold and filthy city without any real stimulation of the sort.  My imagery is almost always invented and scarcely ever real.  But it's probably my fault that you're reading my imagery backwards, so thanks for letting me know you got that reading out of it.

In the end, yes, I'm talking about a library:  we pull leaves "from their backs" ("they" being the dead bodies I've been hinting at), to imply we don't see their faces.  I was thinking this was way too vague, and now I think a sonnet was probably too short for such a complicated idea.  Again, thanks for reading.

Mysteria:  Like I said to you over th'M-S-N, it's a library.  I guess you trillionaires from British Columbia can afford to do research in bookstores, though.  

Littlewing:  Really nice seeing you again!  The indents, like the capitals, are just an editorial element that's sometimes added to sonnets in print.  I like it because it makes a sort of visual organization without having line breaks.  If you look at some of the sonnets by Nan and vlraynes, you just might find huge fonts and breaks between the quatrains/couplet (or the octave/sestet), if I remember right.  I always prefer to emphasize the smallness of the sonnet, so I keep my hands off line breaking and opt for indentation.

You caught my hospital-imagery (or a morgue, or a mausoleum, but either way an artificial indoors).  After that, you sort of came away from what I was going for:  the whole poem is the living speaking to the dead, the possible practices of mourning contrasted with the impersonal separation of the written text from the living creature (which is what a library has).  Milton was dead long before we ever came into the library, so we don't even turn over his cold body, but pick leaves out of him.  I guess we forget to love the people that write things, even if they're poets, academics, whatever...

Thanks for reading me.

loved_and_redeemed:  I'm glad that you were able to enjoy the obscurity of my meaning.  It seems to have just frustrated everyone else!  I was honestly trying to do exactly what you describe... I always love reading poems that are not readily available to the understanding, but only if they have enough intrigue to invite the necessary work of interpretation.  I'm glad that you felt that way, then.  Thank you for your kind words, and for taking the time to respond.

Midnitesun:  I think you've read this poem the same way as Martie did the first time around.  Again, this is totally my fault:  I must not have made it obvious that I was being non-literal with my imagery and literal only at the conceptual level.  

Alicat:  I'm glad that it flows!  Lately my meters have been disorganized, and I've really moved into a style that uses lots of enjambment.  What I've been experimenting with lately, and secretly in this poem, is the use of rhyming words as subjects of new sentences.  This is an idea I mostly got from Tennyson's poem "The Kraken," though he used his rhyming words as active verbs, and I think I mostly used mine as nouns.  I also made a bet with myself that I couldn't write a Spenserian stanza with the rhyming word being "fingers," but I managed with some imperfect rhyme (which I hope was buried in the flow, if I indeed did manage that).  You've also unpacked enough of my imagery to restore some of my confidence in the clarity of my poem, which I appreciate.  Thanks as always for reading me.

Serenity Blaze:  Yes, I did enjoy this muchly!

Thanks to you all for your comments.  You really have helped me to feel a bit better about writing poetry, especially since I'm in kind of a slump.

Brian

"To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form."
~Robert Frost