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Beau de L'air
Member
since 2006-08-03
Posts 105
Middlesex, England

0 posted 2006-08-09 07:53 PM


Naively, I sent this to Spiritual, possibly a mistake.. I don't think Darwinian evolution is flavour of the month there. I don't qualify for Workshop..  Critical Analysis can't be bothered plus it's not very critical.  Last chance saloon, (plus huglets is here.)  Anyway I've deleted it from Spiritual and now it's here.  

This is a long project for me, going back many years and many re-writes.  It still has a somewhat theatrical metaphysical personality. The number of lines per verse meant something once but I can't for the life of me remember what.  I've appended an annotation at the end for the curious.


The Book of Numbers


Why do islands come in threes and divinities
Confer in triplicate. What triameter,
Revealed the original Word and in what dialect
Was it first heard in human time?

Why do rivers, fed from hills in brittle cold
And water-melt, (begun their long meandering song),
When in aboriginal glee we swam in them)?
Why built our cities from their slime,
Sucked from the breath of time?

Spun of gold things, and all the stones of light
And durable objects imaginable,
Will one future day announce our busy lives.
And we’ll too be drawn, in the book of numbers.

So may as well shake the cup and let the dice
By calculation, reckon our time on earth.
Wandering spirits in unimaginable time,  
The night is out there, to gaze, and yet,
Hominid, what you see is what you get.

DG amended 2006  (from 'Nicodaemion')

Verse 1:   Dialect, a pun(?) on "dialectic" and the famous and most wonderful opening triplet of all time

"In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God.
And the Word was God."  KJV, (the one and only)

Trinities: Why are there so many concordances between say, Christianity (Trinity) and other schematic religious arrangements, in Hinduism for instance?  I'm hoping "triameter" is a neologism!

Verse 2:  Social evolution from the wild to cities.  The origin of man reflected in the "songlines"

Verse 3:  Future archaeologists will dig up our civilisation and think..... "What the @##??!!"

Verse 4:  What did the first conscious humans think they were seeing when they saw the big fat moon in the night sky or anything in the night sky for that matter?......I bet they thought..  "What the @##??!!"

(I mean before the nutcases, priests, gurus, druids and prophets cornered the market)

Question: does anybody in cyberland enjoy "metaphysical" poetry?  Or is EVERBODY self- therapizing?? In free verse to boot.

[This message has been edited by Beau de L'air (08-10-2006 04:03 AM).]

© Copyright 2006 D Gettings - All Rights Reserved
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