Friday, May 18, 2007

Silver

A myriad splinters of moonlight
The rain had left the forest
But wet wooden drops
Could be heard over
The rolling gurgle of
A newly formed rivulet.

I watched a drop hurtle down
And pierce the Moon in the centre.
Whipping silver moon-rings
Break the blackness of the lake
And roll back to form a new Moon.
Like platinum Matryoshka dolls.

With every growing ripple
I smile wider
In memory of a
Blank
White
Happiness.

Then there is a silence
Like a pause after this line





And a bird shoots through the Moon
On the lake
While the ripples stretch themselves
To reach the cool, spectral love
Of the White mirror, to me.

I sit on a rock
Cushioned by the moss
And bend forward
To gather the harp tunes
Of reflected reflections.
In ten fingers of drenched music
I saw the silver slivers
Of the distant orb.

15 comments:

  1. brilliant.. enjoyed it very much.

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  2. wow!
    enchanting. mesmerisingly so. :)

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  3. Anonymous6:29 PM

    Dear R,
    Glad you found it so... :-)

    Dear M,
    Glad you liked it... :-)

    Dear mr,
    :-) Wow!? :-) Glad you found it so.

    Dear All,
    I am away on vacation (in the city of endless hot days) and I might not be able to respond to your comments... My apologies.

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  4. Anonymous12:41 AM

    Hi! Eroteme!

    You are in Chennai ?!!

    When one reads your sliver of silver everything suddenly feels magically cool :)
    Enjoy ...

    (*_*)

    Uma

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  5. Anonymous11:28 AM

    "...to gather the harp tunes of...reflections" is simply superior poetry - stark, beautiful, and natural (even here, "reflected" reflections is rasping; you should have avoided the "reflected" , as too you should have the muchloved :-) silver sliver - ugh. What were you thinking of to be good poetry when you wrote these words together?)

    # This single line should have redeemed the the rest of the poem and its contrived imagery and verbose and overthetop style in choice of words and sequence of lines. But unfortunately, it doesn't.

    The poem should have been lucid, beautiful, drowning me in its imagery; but despite all the fantastic images depicted, it only makes me tired with its abundant noise. ("Wooden drops"!!!! -High on water again,were you, that made you feel drops as wooden and concrete as parchment? Bad bad description).
    I find any poetic value missing in this post of yours.

    # Disappointing. And in a percentage literary satisfaction of a 100 from this blog's creations, I am disgruntled that this should be the effect of a post that I am coming to after long.

    # You seem to have been busy herein, Eroteme, while We seem to have been lazy vacationing!Lots of posts to read and ponder over, enjoy with, or be scathingly and unpopularly critical about as in here! All in a days work for a commenter in your blog, I suppose :-D; anyway, who is complaining? Let me see what else gives---------

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  6. Anonymous1:02 PM

    Dear Anon-A,
    Yes I am in Chennai. Glad you feel that way. :-)

    Dear P,
    Been a long time. I am sorry that this poem isn't to your taste. I suppose when I read Ricercar's comment too I felt that she found the words beautiful and probably not the poem! :-) I hope I can present a better poem sometime later and redeem myself. The wooden is not for the material of the drops but for the tone of each drop's fall. A drop of water on a tin roof is very different from that on a soggy wooden trunk/branch. That is what I hoped to capture. Glad there was at least one line which caught your attention... :-)

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  7. Well, I certainly enjoyed that poem. You write well, you do.

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  8. Anonymous4:35 PM

    # I know, I know it is not my blog...

    # After this attempt at writing poetry, I am humbled and freely acknowledge the simple beauty of your "Silver". My version sounds to my own ears too wordy/verbose, loud, staccatoed, artificial - you name it.

    # Eroteme, as a master in creative writing, use velvet gloves when ripping apart this derivative poem which obviously takes off from your original here. And do so only because this is my first attempt at poetry and I shouldn't be made into a pulp at the outset. Not that this fact warrants the camouflaging of the true opinion regarding this poem.

    # Hope I am not crucified for this
    :-D -------------------

    Here goes-

    "The secret pulse of the parted rain
    Beats a jaunty cadence of falling drops
    On woods and trees and fragrance new.
    A shake, a quiver on a bright leaf here,
    A lilt, a pirouette on a lacy web there
    Drowned the rolling gurgle of
    a baby brook green."

    A diamond sharp, indeed, is this bead of rain,
    That pierces the Moon
    in fierceness vile
    Breaking the sleepy lake from its blackness deep,
    Cleaving it, whipping it to rings in silver
    That rush out and roll in, rush out and roll in: all in a flow of a mighty trance...
    But I, the seer, only mark and note
    Matryoshka Moons in a platinum dance!

    Dim and shine the dips and crests, in a mystic ballet of moon and water.
    My veiled smile grows wider and overt,
    Threading sweet memories to a space.
    A White and Elusive space of
    A happiness blank and quiet.

    A Silence.
    A Stillness.
    A Nothingness.

    ...how black the red bird is
    When it flies across the Moon in the sky!
    - silhouettes, contours
    all in a euphemism
    of Black and lines, of glimmer and shade, and,
    of a sameness silken and smooth.

    Its long tail a darting blade,
    a bluebird plunges into the Water-Moon.
    Once more the ripples stretch themselves,
    To come to me.
    To my spectral love of a White Mirror.

    Can an emptiness love?

    ...Moving lake.
    Lifeless rock.
    I am a marble stillness.

    I gather the harp tunes of a myriad reflections
    In ten fingers of drenched music
    From a glass house of a million mirrors
    And see
    a silver arc of
    The distant orb."

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  9. Wow! Eroteme and Parvati, you both rock!
    It was simply a treat going thru this post :-)

    Dear Eroteme,
    Beautiful post. Keep it up. I'm proud of you:-), as always.

    Dear Parvati,
    Loved reading your poem.Beautiful..Was this really your first attempt at poetry?I really doubt that..And I always enjoy your critique on this blog. Keep it up:-)

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  10. I sit on a rock
    Cushioned by the moss
    And bend forward
    To gather the harp tunes
    Of reflected reflections.
    In ten fingers of drenched music
    I saw the silver slivers
    Of the distant orb.
    No words to describe...all of us have become accustomed to such creative writing....kudos :)

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  11. Anonymous8:26 PM

    Dear tM,
    Glad you liked it... :-)

    Dear P,
    The blog might not be, but the comment section is quite as much yours as yours truly!! ;-)
    As I admitted, I do not consider this a great poem (damn this cyber-cafe's keyboard). Your version is quite chirpy and beautiful too. I doubt whether this is your first poem ever! Really? :-o You are very good, in that case. :-)
    I do not enjoy your first stanza. It comes across as a little too loud when trying to capture a fairly quite night time in the woods. I like "Matryoshka Moons" over the phrase I employed. I simply loved the "how black the red bird is". Beautiful. In between I lost track of things but the end is fine. As shameless as I may be, would you consider writing for Alvibest!!!? :-D

    Dear M,
    Parvati does lend an interesting touch to this blog, doesn't she? :-) I am glad that I make you proud, dear. :-)

    Dear P,
    Glad you liked it... :-)

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  12. Anonymous1:34 PM

    @Munmun:
    Thank you!
    Yes, this was the first time that I even attempted any poetry, barring haikus of course, and your disbelief is highly gratifying to a mind that is full of self-doubt regarding its creative capacities, especially where poetry writing goes. I think the existence of a template in the form of Eroteme's original made the job a tad easier for copy cats like me :-D. Anyway, am glad to know that my comments/critiques interest you. Though they too are like "reflected reflections" as they too need the original in the form of Eroteme's posts....

    @Eroteme:
    I'd thought that you would tear my(??!!) poem to shreds, but am consoled that you have been lenient, as it were. An exhaustive critique would have helped, but this should do, I suppose.

    # Of course this is my first attempt at poetry. I have never had the temerity to venture thus far in the writer's country.

    # Shameless you are not, but I know the to-me-inaccessible-superior-literary-quality levels demanded by Alvibest, and aeons may come and ago, but I dont see me being able to write with such calibre as I have seen in your, Sriram's, Lavanya's, or Joan's creations, or even the beautiful poems by Vaidehi.
    But I am honoured that you should ask. Thank you, Sir!

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  13. Anonymous2:13 PM

    Hey, THIS is indeed a long hiatus. When's the next post coming up? Or are you also caught up in the silliness of the season, where everyone is soporific, uncreative, lazy and boring, doing nothing, being nothing?
    Buck up, Eroteme, string out some shining story or brilliant non-fiction pieces.
    Or a neat and tidy zen koan would raise my spirits and tickle my grey cells in the attempt to understand it.
    What say? - would a koan come our way soon?

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  14. Dear P,
    Aiy yaam back! :-) A koan will soon arrive...

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