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When the moon comes, low
in the evening sky, garrulous as birds
on wires above the town,

think again of what divides
and what connects
an ocean and a continent away,

if only for a moment, be still
while the nightingale feasts
and the moon brings woman to man.

All at once, she is naked
and I am taking her by the hips,
pulling her to me from behind,

once more, I am certain
of words that claim what is ours,
‘tender mercies… tender

mercies,’ as if in a dream,
she whispers it, ‘love,
do you wish to enter me this way?’

Nice Piece Mark.......

Mark A. Murphy wrote:When the moon comes, low
in the evening sky, garrulous as birds
on wires above the town,

think again of what divides
and what connects
an ocean and a continent away,

if only for a moment, be still
while the nightingale feasts
and the moon brings woman to man.

All at once, she is naked
and I am taking her by the hips,
pulling her to me from behind,

once more, I am certain
of words that claim what is ours,
‘tender mercies… tender

mercies,’ as if in a dream,
she whispers it, ‘love,
do you wish to enter me this way?’

Mick's feelings about this one, I like the feel, the mood of the piece . However, I am less sure about the imagery.

How is the moon "garrulous" unless there are many talkative Men in the Moon, I suppose.

The bringing together is presumably the romance of the moon. "All at once" does not work for me. It seems like poetic "cheating". As part of a paperback action narrative, I could understand it. But you need to write the move, and make it convincing, from romance to sex. You can't just jump it in this poem because it doesn't fit.

"once more, I am certain
of words that claim what is ours,
‘tender mercies… tender"
I find the middle sentence of this stanza to be clunky


even with those reservations I toast your enjambments (this is a tea-time crit. after all)
hope these crits. are of interest
regards

mickey_one

As Seasons, the demi-goddess amongst the Goddesses, I had the same reaction to "All at once . . . " and seriously thought that, unless he turned his back and she's a quick-change artist, this phrasing likely didn't represent reality, either.

I agree on the repetitions of "tender" and "mercies" just being too much. I didn't think about the "garrulous" implications , for one reason, my not remembering what "garrulous" means... and not looking it up.

Otherwise, the poem as a whole has a very good feeling... the last two lines are particularly impacting in a rather breathtaking way.


~ Lizzy

lizzytysh wrote:As Seasons, the demi-goddess amongst the Goddesses, I had the same reaction to "All at once . . . " and seriously thought that, unless he turned his back and she's a quick-change artist, this phrasing likely didn't represent reality, either.

I agree on the repetitions of "tender" and "mercies" just being too much. I didn't think about the "garrulous" implications , for one reason, my not remembering what "garrulous" means... and not looking it up.

Otherwise, the poem as a whole has a very good feeling... the last two lines are particularly impacting in a rather breathtaking way.


~ Lizzy

in honour of my own pun I have just had toast and jam for my tea.
I didn't comment particularly on the repetition of "tender mercies". the part that doesn't run for me is "I am certain, of words that claim what is ours".
when I was studying English lit. at school we were obliged by statute to describe the nurse in Romeo and Juliet as "garrulous"

Oh, okay... well, I obviously missed that . I guess I've made my own additional comment, then ... and you're right, it is a bit clunky [as well as a bit unclear] with that.


~ Lizzy

Thanks Lizzy and Mickey, your comments are appreciated. The moon is garrulous because it is so low in the sky, so low that it is within human reach. Am I alone in wishing on the moon? Am I alone in conversing with the heavens? I think not. The woman in this piece is an ocean and a continent away from her beloved. He only imagines making love with her, thus the sudden change in mood. The best line is quite clearly the last line. If only I could reproduce that throughout.

the opening kind of throws me all over the place. We have a moon, low in the sky, which bings to a dusky time of day, evening, as you've said. Then we have these birds on wires. Most of the nice birds we think about sitting on wires are diurnal. Are nocturnal ones the birds you want us to think about? Owls? The images are nice, but I have trouble getting them to make sense together. You've put cayenne pepper in my chocolate pudding.

And the only way that connects to what connects and divides is if you're being way too clever - connecting and disconnect day and night. It's just confusion.

I like the second stanza on its own. But it seems to be telling me that your love is an ocean and a continent away, so how can she be suddenly nakedin front of you asking if this is how you want her? You say later, as if in a dream - is it a dream? Is it a memory? A riddle?

I don't understand the third stanza either. What does a feasting nightingale mean?

I don't mind the repetition of tender mercies, but what do you mean with the ellipsis? Improper use of ellipses is one of my personal pet peaves. The comma is a perfectly praiseworthy piece of punctuation for the purpose of pausing. I know common use has gone all haywire. It is one of my tiny crusades to remedy this. The ellipsis is chiefly for emissions. Here is an exemplary use of...

When the moon comes, low
in the evening sky, garrulous as birds
on wires above the town,

think again of what divides
and what connects
an ocean and a continent away.

If only for a moment, be still
while the nightingale feasts
and the moon brings woman to man.

All at once, she is naked
and I am taking her by the hips,
pulling her to me from behind.

Once more, I am certain
of words that claim what is ours,
‘Tender mercies… Tender

mercies...’ As if in a dream,
she whispers it, ‘Love,
do you wish to enter me this way?’


Mark,
As you can see, I have done a bit of re-writing. Just changed the punctuation.
For me it makes more sense reading it this (my) way.

Jimmy

Mana, you must do some work of your own here. i do not wish to guide you through every image/metaphor. But just to humour you... since when did everything in a poem have to be logically consistent? The moon hanging low in the sky relates to early evening when the indigenous birds in England are very active, especially in the summer. Many thousands of starlings gather on the telephone wires in early evening here, I presumed it was the same in Americay. You don't seem to be able to make your mind up about the second stanza. I'll let you into a little secret, I wasn't trying to be clever. The second stanza is addressed indirectly, through the poem to the absent lover who resides on the other side of the world. As for improper uses of ellipses, I can only ask you again to use your imagination (with the help of the poem). I am sign-posting, leaving the reader to make his/her mind up about what is omitted. The spaces between words and clauses are partly what goes to make up a poem for me. If the writer guides you through the entire piece, babysits your imagination, (if you like) what else is there for the reader to do? Sometimes what is not said is more important than what is said. Another little secret, though I shouldn't really tell you, the last line is the only real thing in the poem. The woman in question asked me that very question over the telephone whilst talking about sex. Tender mercies and the spaces in between are what sex is all about for me. Now do I really have to explain why the nightingale is feasting? I've read your posts and seen you on youtube performing (which I liked very much) and I'm guessing you are a very intelligent person with lots of imagination. Please use it.

Jimmy, I think I will go with you on this one. My punctuation at the end may serve to obfuscate.

Manna, one more thing, must you understand every word, every allusion if you are to enjoy a poem or song, etc? Our sense of wonder comes from not knowing how the trick is done. If there was only one way to read a poem, the act of reading would be very boring indeed. There are as many interpretations as there are people doing the reading. I never understand why people are so hell bent on monolithic truths.

Mark wrote:... since when did everything in a poem have to be logically consistent?

Since the beginning of time.
Poems have always had to be logically consistent.

Not necessarily Aristotelian or Boolean logic, or course.
A poem must have its own logic. The logic of the heart, if you like.
Or whatever.

But a mistake is a mistake,
and trying to justify your mistakes with cliches like that
is very immature of you.

Your line

When the moon comes, low
in the evening sky

is simply incorrect.

But perhaps it was a stray comma.
If you had written instead

When the moon comes low
in the evening sky

(without the comma)
then you might have been talking about something
that I just don't know about.
And I didn't want to seem to be picyune about a comma.

But then

Mark wrote:The moon hanging low in the sky relates
to early evening when the indigenous birds
in England are very active, especially in the summer.
Many thousands of starlings gather on the telephone wires
in early evening here, I presumed it was the same in Americay.

So your comma wasn't stray.
You are confused.

The moon hanging low in the sky
does not relate to the early evening.

At the full moon, the moon is visible low on the horizon at twilight time.
But on any other day of the month, at twilight, the moon is
in every possible position in the sky, in roughly 360/28 ~ 12 degree steps,
called "the houses of the moon",
and in different states of visibility, called phases.

Your correlation is not some kind of poetic leap
above everybody else's mundane logic.
It is simply a pedestrian mistake.

(It reminds me of someone who once asked me:
"You know about astronomy,
-what's that star that's always near the moon?")

~~

Also, everyone knows that diurnal birds (as Manna pointed out)
do a "thing" at sunrise and sunset.
And I believe that you have observed this yourself.
Which is good.

But you did not observe a correlation with the moon.
There is none. You made this up out of whole cloth.
Your idea of "poetic" license.
My idea of lying.

~~

Moreover, birds are not being "garrulous" at these times.
That is, they are not being "excessively talkative
in a rambling, roundabout manner, esp. about trivial matters."

What they're on about is far from trivial to them.

In the morning, birds are in ecstasy at the first appearance of the sun.
(I once saw a scissor-tailed fly-catcher, on a telephone wire,
literally turn several summersault the instant the first sun-beam touched it.)

And in the evening, birds express an emotion analogous to terror
or regret at the disappearance of the sun.

If there is any special behavior that birds exhibit
that does correlate with certain visible moons, low on the horizon,
then it is most likely just once a year, with the "harvest moon",
on or about September 23rd, exactly one day
after Leonard Cohen's birthday.

The Harvest Moon is also known as the Wine Moon,
the Singing Moon and the Elk Call Moon.
In myth and folklore the full moon of each month is given a name.
There are many variations but the following list
gives the most widely known names:

January - Wolf moon
February - Ice moon
March - Storm moon
April - Growing moon
May - Hare moon
June - Mead moon
July - Hay moon
August - Corn moon
September - Harvest moon
October - Hunter's moon
November - Snow moon
December - Winter moon

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_moon

From what we humans can tell, birds have about four or five things they say:
1. Yoohoo, or here I am; where are you?
2. Wanna screw?
3. This is mine, it is not yours.
4. HELP!!!
5. (baby birds) FEED ME NOW!!!

but that's beside the point.

I have no way of knowing if they ever get garrulous, though I can let that go as a layman's anthropomorphic description, if the layman is talking about birds. But Mark called the moon as garrulous as birds, which simply makes no sense at all, as M1 pointed out.

I live out in the country, and I pretty much always have. We have more trees than electrical/telephone wires, and it is my experience that birds prefer trees for obvious reasons. It just so happens that I was outside today during the entire course from full sun to the completed sunset. I saw lots of geese, though they were heading pretty much west, so go figure. I also saw some crows. I didn't see the moon. Maybe there are more birds and/or more wires where Mark lives.

Yes, a poem has to be sensible. If you're writing a poem, isn't because you want to communicate? No, it doesn't have to make perfect logical sense. Yes, a good poem is open to interpretation.

Mark, I feel insulted that you aren't willing to explain it. I know that I am not a poetic genius, and I haven't spent more than 2 semesters studying poetry, but I am also pretty fucking far from stupid. (Pardon my word choice, I obviously mean poetically learning disabled.) What it seems to me that what you're saying is that it is my own fault that I don't understand it, and that I shouldn't try to understand it because it doesn't have to make sense to be appreciable. This is illogical. I am pretty happy to acknowledge that you are right; I am hell-bent on understanding, or at least on gaining some comfort with an interpretation of what is available. I think that's a pretty good way to live.

You don't understand this:

the electrical roots stabbed
the garrulous nightingale
and turned it
into a wide-eyed owl

but that doesn't mean that I can't explain what I might be trying to say, that is, if it were more than me pulling images out of my bum. I like the idea of a feasting nightingale. It's very interesting, and I can acknowledge part of its interest is in not knowing what it means. Interesting is, in itself, good. But interesting isn't enough by itself. Here's what I know about nightingales: they're known for singing, especially at night. Here's what I know after some googling and wikying: it's the national bird of both Iran & Bangledesh. It's the males are the golden-voiced. They eat bugs. It seems we don't have them here in the US. And that has helped quite a bit with my understanding your use of a nightingale, though I can only guess why your bird is feasting. Maybe you (or the guy of your poem or whatever) can't hear her because she doesn't like to sing with her mouth full, regardless of that she is an ocean and a continent away, even though, as if in a dream, she is suddenly naked and right in front of him.

Speaking of which, when you say, "As if in a dream," that means that it is not a dream, eh? And if you have gone to the length to tell us that it isn't a dream, that's pretty much the same as telling us that whatever happens "as if in a dream" really did happen, which doesn't make sense because you've already told us she is a few thousand miles away. I might suggest, and even possibly believe the interpretation that she has suddenly flown home in a fury of longing and unexpected passion, except that you have already told us in another post that it is his imagination. In other words, a day dream. In other words, not as if in a dream, but really, yes, in a dream.

One final thing, I shall not yield regarding the ellipsis. If Leonard used an ellipsis to indicate a longish pause, or to end an already complete thought, I would roll my eyes at him too.

And just because we're in Nonsenseland, I am putting my preface to this post at the end. Two weeks from now, I may very well think this is a good poem, even if you leave it teetotally unchanged. I really am sorry that I am dealing with you in this pissy way. (Well, not really, but I know myself well enough that I will be in a week or two.) It's just that I get into these moods sometimes where everything is shite. Don't think that such thinking is not also husband-directed, best-friend-directed, daughter-directed, and of course, self-directed. Two weeks from now, can we be friends?

If you're not too sick of me to have a look at my editing:

Think again of what divides
and what connects an ocean
and a continent away
while the nightingale feasts
and the moon brings woman to man.
Once more, I am certain
of words that claim what is ours,
tender mercies, tender
mercies. In a dream,
she whispers, ‘love,
do you wish to enter me this way?’

ps. please forgive my stupid grammar mistakes from typing too fast and thinking too slowly.