11-24-2017, 09:13 PM
i must admit -- this is pretty hard to revise. i dig most of your notes, in particular about how i should cut a few lines from the first two stanzas, or how the third isn't much of a poem at all, but the whole is structured so strictly i'm inclined to dismiss this to oblivion. at the very least, though, the ultimate fruit of a week's worth of effort, with the intent not only to clean up the easier spots pointed out, but also to clarify my original intention.
Bellerophon
We are a sort of vanished generation,
even if there's no trauma yet to grab
at our collective consciousness -- the half
of us that still can act,
they fail to see the visions
crippling our poets and politicians:
a world at war, a world aflame,
a world returned to tyrants' hands,
and other such abstractions. Or perhaps
they see, yet feel they're free
as long as future's future -- for we lack
an iron will and smoldering lexicon
to play dictator, the modern
butchered by our mothers and our fathers
into a Chimera we'll mock to fight,
a Pegasus we'll soon lose.
Bellerophon
We are a sort of vanished generation,
even if there's no trauma yet to grab
at our collective consciousness -- the half
of us that still can act,
they fail to see the visions
crippling our poets and politicians:
a world at war, a world aflame,
a world returned to tyrants' hands,
and other such abstractions. Or perhaps
they see, yet feel they're free
as long as future's future -- for we lack
an iron will and smoldering lexicon
to play dictator, the modern
butchered by our mothers and our fathers
into a Chimera we'll mock to fight,
a Pegasus we'll soon lose.