Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Key

This kid may be the key not just to all human potential, but to all spiritual unexplained paranormal phenomena.  

The key to everything in The X-Files.

~ Chris Carter, in The X-Files episode "The End" [5.20] (17 May 1998) Mulder to Scully

We receive His peace when we ask Him for it.

We keep His peace by extending it to others.

Those are the keys and there are no others.

~Marianne Williamson

Key signature A major /F♯ minor

Midweek Motif ~ The Key

Keys in movies that find their locks, 

Keys in cryptography that are the codes, 

Keys to life and 

Keys to heaven:

Keys are real or magical or symbolic.

Your challenge is to write a poem in which your narrator either gives or asks for a key.

What does the Key open?

Three Poetic Inspirations: 

Lament

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Listen, children:

Your father is dead.

From his old coats

I'll make you little jackets;

I'll make you little trousers

From his old pants.

There'll be in his pockets

Things he used to put there,

Keys and pennies

Covered with tobacco;

Dan shall have the pennies

To save in his bank;

Anne shall have the keys

To make a pretty noise with.

Life must go on,

And the dead be forgotten;

Life must go on,

Though good men die;

Anne, eat your breakfast;

Dan, take your medicine;

Life must go on;

I forget just why.

Music

BY JUHAN LIIV

TRANSLATED FROM THE ESTONIAN BY H.L. HIX & JÜRI TALVET

Read the translator's notes

It must be somewhere, the original harmony,

somewhere in great nature, hidden.

Is it in the furious infinite,

in distant stars’ orbits,

is it in the sun’s scorn,

in a tiny flower, in treegossip,

in heartmusic’s mothersong

or in tears?

It must be somewhere, immortality,

somewhere the original harmony must be found:

how else could it infuse

the human soul,

that music?

Source: Poetry (June 2011).

The Past

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

The debt is paid,

The verdict said,

The Furies laid,

The plague is stayed,

All fortunes made;

Turn the key and bolt the door,

Sweet is death forevermore.

Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,

Nor murdering hate, can enter in.

All is now secure and fast;

Not the gods can shake the Past;

Flies-to the adamantine door

Bolted down forevermore.

None can re-enter there,—

No thief so politic,

No Satan with a royal trick

Steal in by window, chink, or hole,

To bind or unbind, add what lacked,

Insert a leaf, or forge a name,

New-face or finish what is packed,

Alter or mend eternal Fact.

~

 Please:  

1.      Post your Key Motif poem on your site, and then link it here.

2.      Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 

3.      Leave a comment here.

4.      Honor our community by visiting and commenting on others' poems.

(Next Week's Midweek Motif will be Snakes)

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