Chinook (Poetry Monthly)
By Philip Sidney
- 11429 reads
In the quiet stillness at the end of the school day
real life creeps in, a merest echo in cool corridors
the shadow of a signature across a dusty window
through which summer green and cloud and blue
stretch toward future, into dream - beyond reach
the transparent barrier marks where participation
and observation begins, a trilling song of life is on
the other side of the glass, a deep hum and throb
announces a chinook’s steady moth-like progress
weighty, awkward, incongruous in the midland sky
we read Futility today, felt the sun warm our arms
as we witnessed a faraway and long ago death that
served no purpose, thought of our own, closed the
book and shook ourselves into the present and we
were glad, now the solemn sound of war and pain
and death hangs above, will not hurry, I must look
can only hope some boy feels the sun on his face.
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Comments
So much touched on, from the
So much touched on, from the window shown to be where participation and observation begins, to the lumbering description of the helicoper and the touching on the agonies of wars. Yet concise and followable.
served no purpose, thought of our own Does that mean that to us the consequences or 'what might have been's are unknown? true of so many deaths at whatever age, and other incidents of this life.
Rhiannon
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There are two very personal,
There are two very personal, stand out images in this poem - the chinook (I remember the thrum from tonnes of them constantly flying around in my childhood) and teaching that wonderful poem 'Futility'. The warming sun is such a lasting image and you've managed to use it for your own devices here. Really enjoyed this.
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There can be no greater
There can be no greater contrast than the image offered by the helicopter, as a war machine, and Wilfred Owen's poem describing the consequences and futility of armed conflicts.
A skilfully crafted poem, Helen. Congratulations.
Luigi
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This is our joint poem of the
This is our joint poem of the week! Well done.
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the kind old sun will know
the kind old sun will know and indeed it is so. Futility and war to end all war. None the wiser, however high we climb, poems like this take us to a different time, strangely present in the past, that moment that has just past.
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Wonderful. Has a fly trapped
Wonderful. Has a fly trapped in amber feel - the stillness of a capturred moment.
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I love the echo from Futility
I love the echo from Futility the sun-warmed arms in the classroom and the sun that fails to wake the dead boy in France. Setting it in school gives added weight and poignancy to the cold clays being dragged and shaped and educated and pulled from the earth and then obliterated... how many of these midlands children will end up serving in some awful war?
The chinook and the whole poem acts as a throb, a tap at the window, a throb of feeling and disaster as this cumbersome clumsy crawling moth brings the conflict right into our daydreams.
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this is really effective, not
this is really effective, not really able to comment on technical aspects but I felt like it rolled along really well, had a transportive pull in the writing and structure, carries you through striking images and makes you confront things within that pull. great poem :-)
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