missing my pettiness

[Kailashana]

someone is missing
will you please call in the search party?
track these footprints to the ocean
of silence--
its plaintive sound and its magnificent fury

what is it, this mourning?

this is my obsession, the crucible of
my longing...
I need someone to ruffle my
feathers on occasion
to preen its darkness and separate
the hounds of victory from the bugler's call

I don't know how to give peace a chance
but I know I don't want to miss my last tango with the
Lord of Dance, brutal as he is
with poems and the intrinsic nature of my solitude

don't know why Lennon died
but i know it's not because he didn't know how to live

don't know much about a dove's flight
its aerodynamic wings,
but I can tell the difference between
an olive branch
and a stick in the mud,
or a stick from a rope

don't send my shadow back to
the dark cavernous earth,
let Mt. Etna
spit my brokenness.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


D. H. Lawrence
Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to
talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid
black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified
haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923




~A

[saw]

the DH Lawrence makes me want to visit Taormina before I die, also my mother's mother ( my grandmother from her side) is from Sicily.....yet alas I have not been there yet.....I say yet, because I am hopeful.....

your poem is a great compliment to his work as you eloquently express your own version on the notions of pettiness and as well as a broader peek at human nature...., very original and fresh.......

[theirishsea]

I like your poem---very expressive. I will have to read the Lawrence poem to get the full impact of your poem. However, I do like your poem. And things like this

what is it, this mourning?

Some may criticize your first stanza as being cliche' BUT I think it is effective and appropriate for the context. "the ocean of silence"----I think it is very expressive.