12-31-2017, 03:42 AM
(12-31-2017, 03:38 AM)vagabond Wrote:I can't change the last line. That one is supremely fixed and very rigid: it's stolen from Eliot but I've changed it slightly to make it hopeful.(12-30-2017, 08:51 AM)AttnAttack Wrote: In the Meadows where our bodies lay
Between the vicious thorns of blackberries
We hid and danced and ran so far away i think you could leave out "so far" because in the last part of the poem the subject (s) seem to build on exactly this bombed earth.
When the clouds had read our histories ok.. clouds might bring the rain that follows in the two last lines.. in that context you could write "the clouds soaked up our histories"
And when the rain restores the Life we burnt
I'll show you love in a handful of dirt.
i admit i did not get those blackberries being grenades.. so, good thing you explained, with that info it makes for a more interesting poem to a slow reader like me : )
but it´s a bit hard to believe this promise of love out of bombed earth especially if "the Life" was burned by the victim and the person adressed.
if you´d could get rid of that "we" in the last but one line i would accept it more easily.
so i imagine something like "when rain restores the life that´s burnt/ we´ll try to raise love from a handful of dirt"
all this would probably turn your poem into something you didn´t want to say, but it´s the only feedback i can offer.
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust". Is the line; it refers to the savage brutality of war that left the landscape charred and ashen. My reply, if you could even call it that, is that rain turns the ash to dirt, and dirt back into life. It is a cycle.
The speakers are a soldier during the first world war, and a visitor years later, after the hills have turned green (present day)
You will find that the newest version fixes many of the issues with the poem. I do like your suggestion for the 4th line. I am torn because I enjoy the slight vagueness offered by it (clouds reading/revealing us instead of the opposite, histories referring to the history of the place/history of man, etc.). Feels a bit too open ended.

