Saints preserved Edit 0.0001

[tectak]

Did you really write this in 1965?  Wow, I imagine you have quite an extensive oeuvre. It is kind of funny though, because the first time I read this I thought to myself that it was lacking something that your more recent poems have. Not a line or phrase, but a better understanding of how to use language. The rhyming in this piece is excellent, you have an amazing talent, but there is the always implicit fact that a death themed poem shouldn't sound like a children's lullaby. Creepy... But the dreariness of death is only half of this poem, after all the crows fold to the inspiring image of gulls. I really love the stanza about the sailors' graves. That marked a turn in the poem that increased my appreciation for the title. Your personification in the first stanza made sense, because you took wind out of the equation. When I read "Death walks like..." I thought here we go again. Mist might not have anything to do with walking, but if you imagine a misty, windless dawn that sense of zero gravity really gives the mist a motion similar to walking, or looming. It works, and I know it takes really skill to fit something functional like that into a strict meter. The crows' nests falling out of the tree kind of conflicted with the motionless wind. Maybe the crows acted the force upon the nests to make it fall? No. The crows are long dead, only a faint croak is left. That less moan of deaths imminence, though, is immediately combated with the soaring gulls, I like how they become such an empathized opposite, and that you state they are like the sailors soul, fighting on past those dark images of the first few stanzas. This poem becomes a case of the cycle of life. The dawn brings nothing but the idea of death, yet at the end of the day those who have lived still matter to nature itself. They live on in nature in fact. It is destiny.

Hello stanley,
Thanks for reading. Yes, I wrote a lot of stuff like this back then. A limited vocabulary! I can only just remember a little churchyard and tiny church somewhere in the ne coast if England...broken tombstones, yew trees, seascape,  bright red dawn (sailors warning), sea fret....crows and gulls.  The thing is, it HAD to rhyme because that is what poetry did...times change.
Just a few points. It was based on a local sailing tragedy but historic even then. The gravestones told the story. Crow's nest has a  dual meaning. There had been a recent storm and several nests were in the grass. As the sun got up an onshore breeze pulled in mist and surface dry sand swizzed along the shoreline. Why am I telling you all this? Well, it is to remind us both that visualising is everything...thoughts are better described with veracity and short words than hyperbole and long words. I find it much harder to write like this now...and I regret that. After "seeing" many things one gets  not just complacent but blind. It is good to look at things with an astounded attitude.
Best,
tectak
PS. There is a good deal wrong with the piece (and the genre) so don't expect more of the same.

You say there is a good deal wrong with this piece, and the genre. Could you elaborate? I do not boast my ability to scantion poetry, but this piece rotates between iambic tetrameter and trimeter. A ballad? There must be a reason this meter is still around. What is it you find wrong with the genre?

Hello stanley,
The genre has had its day. The idea of simplistic rhyme forcing the writer to use words with double intent i.e. to make sense AND to rhyme, is generally considered to be too difficult for many and too contrived for others. Rhyming verse IS difficult but as a discipline it satisfies the needs of the wordsmith but not the aloof poet...you know, the kind of "poet" who writes "poetically" by using achaic english, makes use of dramatic phrases ( Ah, but that I should knowest thee in all but name....blah blah), or insists on capitalising every line, writing everything in lower case, making shapes with words, using bizarre enjambment or "artistic" line-breaks etc.
Of course, there is a place for everything....but not always a time
So what is wrong with the piece as it stands? Well, to be frank, it IS contrived as it MUST be...but it shows. That is a weakness.
Best,
tectak