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White Hen And Chickens by Joseph Crawhall III |
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“Since when," he asked, "Are the first line and last line of any poem where the poem begins and ends?” ― Seamus Heaney
Beautiful World - In The Beginning
Midweek Motif ~ Beginnings
The question of "how to begin" has generated books upon books in every game and every field, and the answers are still not exhausted. Yet things begin, and often before the visible and public (or private) beginning. Consider how a flower opens. Would you count its beginning in the bud? in the seed? in the idea of a flower?
Your Challenge: In your new poem, trace a thing, event, or action back to its true or imagined beginnings.
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| Casting on |
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
excerpt from Elegy in Joy By Muriel Rukeyser
We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.
The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children:
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.
This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.
Start Close In
by David WhyteStart close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take.
. . . .(Read the rest HERE.)
Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—
Tall oaks from little acorns grow."
(D. Everett in The Columbian Orator, 1797)
*****(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Vision.)
