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Tom Merrill's avatar

I read the 3 short ones, long poems daunt me so I usually circumvent them.

What caught me about the trio of short ones was a certain distinction of language all 3 possess. Perhaps that fact alone will induce me to alter custom and tackle the longie.

In all 3 you are speaking at a higher level than most will find within grasp would be my guess.

I'm glad David put you up in the lights.

I also listened to your podcast with David. That was harder going, in part I think because your voice has a bit of gravelliness to it, which, combined with your speechspeed during the exchange, may explain why many words didn't come through to me. C'est la vie I guess.

En bref, hope to see you here again.

As a gift, in a separate reply box under this, if I can make it magically appear there, I'll include something by me, one which still represents my best advice.

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Tom Merrill's avatar

A Brief Alarm

Like everything, this too will soon be lost,

Forever out of sight and out of mind,

A brief alarm resorbed into the sum

Of passing things that leave no trace behind.

For its duration, it would summon all

To a restraint heroic—to be brave

Beyond all generations gone before,

And make a sacrifice more sure to save:

To starve the ground, and lay no further feast

For bloated Earth's unflagging appetite,

But be content to plow redemptively

A barren field in which no seed seeks light

And make your plots the last wherein to toss

A harvest raised for neverending loss.

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Tom Merrill's avatar

My latest apothegm:

Distrust every Buddha who never descends from the mountain.

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agnusde2017's avatar

I liked these poems. I thought the shifting rhyme scbemes and the subdued islands of the end rhymes contributed to a tone of reflective calmness. The rhymes and the rhythm never cross into boisterousness. The aural restraint of the sounds draws the reader into the poetry's universe of restraint.

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Tom Merrill's avatar

Mute Opinion

I

I traversed a dominion

Whose spokesmen spake out strong

Their purpose and opinion

Through pulpit, press, and song.

I scarce had means to note there

A large-eyed few, and dumb,

Who thought not as those thought there

That stirred the heat and hum.

II

When, grown a Shade, beholding

That land in lifetime trode,

To learn if its unfolding

Fulfilled its clamoured code,

I saw, in web unbroken,

Its history outwrought

Not as the loud had spoken,

But as the mute had thought.----T.Hardy

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