I'm standing in the mirror world
where the clocks run widdershins.
We write like Leonardos
code-writing with each hand.
I continue looking outward
though the silver blinds the glass
since I know there's something other
that I cannot understand.
I'm wearing nankeen trousers
amongst a horde in khaki drill,
I cannot march their tempo
and I'm sure I never will.
In flight on Escher's staircase,
am I going up or down?
I'm asking serious questions
in the make-up of a clown.
Comments
animan | June 11, 2008 - 13:11
I think this is one of those rare cases where the poem works partly because one isn't sure what it's about. In a funny way, that's all the more honest. Also, I think what links each scenario is the moood, the emotional tempo in other words, - slightly different from plain mood! (Nah, that was just a typo but I liked it. I seem to have 'othered' within my own comment ...) I don't like 'widdershins' though - it's mooodditically different from the rest of the language, I 'd say. But, overall, I think in many ways the biggest challenge for a poem is to be emotionally literate and positioned, rather than intellectually such, and I think this poem is the former, if not the latter.
chuck | June 11, 2008 - 13:50
Very nice. I feel like that a lot of the time. Widdershins BTW means 'in a direction opposite to the usual'....I had to look it up.
Caldwell | June 11, 2008 - 20:17
It's like Jacob's Ladder.
Doeslittle | June 11, 2008 - 20:22
I'm not sure that it's unclear at all. I think it's excellent. I loved 'I am asking serious questions in the makeup of a clown'.
jennifer | June 11, 2008 - 20:44
I agree, and I think that 'widdershins' is perfect.
I particularly like, from the same verse as Doeslittle's pick:
'In flight on Escher's staircase,
am I going up or down?'
especially because I love Escher and the feeling of backwardness and oddness so captured here.
sunshine | June 12, 2008 - 20:44
Like it - a sophisticated Lewis Carroll evocation