Othered

By Ewan

Wed, 11 Jun 2008
  • 1346 reads
6 comments
 

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.

Certificate U
Poem
Miscellaneous

Comments

Submitted by animan on
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.

 

Submitted by chuck on
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.

Submitted by Caldwell on
It's like Jacob's Ladder.

Submitted by onemorething on
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'.

 

Submitted by jennifer on
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.

 

Submitted by sunshine on
Like it - a sophisticated Lewis Carroll evocation