The Monk

[alonso ramoran]

okay thanks achebe. i thought aching wreath was quite a simple metaphor. nothing too colourful. i will rewrite it.
thanks again to both of you for being forthright with your critiques

---

okay here's the rewritten work.

A centuries old omen cross I like this thought about a cross being an omen, esp. after it has been drooped inside a mill. Like the cross, this man is weathered and probably thinks of himself as bad for other people. This cross can also be a sign of his faith being torn. I think you can maybe expand on this.
once drooped in the sawdust mill,
did this weathered man
now clutch in his wringing hand. Wringing hand sounds nice and it ages him well (in his case, not so well)

To reconcile his lonely way
the misty air of mistresses face Maybe mistress faces?
walked by his laurel eyes laurel eyes does not make any sense 
out over winters hill, By the end of this stanza, you made it sound as if the misty air was the one to walk by this monk. If this is intentional, it needs some explaining.

as where the town did lay this line is awkward. I was gonna say take out the "did" but then i thought that "laid" is a pretty  weird  verb to use for a town. Maybe something along the lines of "where the town was sprawled". This would give a good image of a town being on the ground and helpless.
in roundabout thought in hemlock cage was this a cage built of hemlock?
boundless they murmured
and hemmed his say,

for no value they sought "They sought no value" sounds way more natural.
in heavy lids A nice way of saying tired.
or an inward sigh
of selfless grace,

it turned in them
they would onward subdue
and mar each others place

Towards the end of the poem it seemed to be more about the city than the monk. That kind of lost me. There are still some questions of the poem that are not being addressed in the poem. Just for fun, try writing this in the way you speak and see what you get. You might be delightfully surprised.