bereft, in Kathmandu

[qimissung]

Standing on the street the coffee spills
In this lunar light it looks like blood
My heart constricts, is tightly bound
And still it leaks my life with you
Still it pumps away the hope and love and loss
I look away
Our love, I think, can never be rewound
And now I am alone, in Kathmandu

When we began we both knew Sanskrit,
traced it in each others face and lips and thoughts
and limbs, the only language we would ever need;
And we spied it in the terrain of each
Others alienated hearts,
Holding dear the fool’s gold we discovered there
And now we’ve lost the lingua franca
That we thought we’d found, in Kathmandu

When did we forget to be
The best friend each other ever had?
Turning slowly all I see
Are strangers and your face
disappearing in the crowd, crying
Broken tears that look like blood;
You’ve stolen, I fear, the currency of my love
And now I stand, bereft, in Kathmandu

My heart is twisting in the wind,
The loving words you spoke are litter,
Merely fluttering down the darkened street,
My face reflecting your forgotten dreams
As all around us people whisper in the sacred
Ancient language of the gods that we once knew;
And now I stand, a silver statue in the moon
Among the golden words of Kathmandu

[quasimodo1]

To qimissung: You poem is elegant, touching and very skillfully done. This poem is one of the best I've seen in the private poetry section. Really. q1

[qimissung]

Wow. I'm speechless. Thank you, quasimodo.

[~Sophia~]

Hi qim! Wonderful poem. I love the staccato of the word Kathmandu and the way you worked it into the last line of each stanza. Repetition without repetition. The whole poem is really touching but my favorite part is the second verse. Fabulous visuals. Great work!

[Silas Thorne]

A beautiful poem! :) I also love the repitition of Kathmandu and the smooth rhyming within the poem.


...I suddenly got a flash of 'the green-eye of the little yellow god' after reading it for some strange reason. This of course has nothing to do with the content of the poem, just that the refrain reminded me of it. Must just be the word Khatmandu. :)

Why 'fluttering merely' and not 'merely fluttering'? It must be better your way, but I'm not sure why.

Great work!
:)

[PrinceMyshkin]

I got to this somewhat late and others have already spoken the admiration for it that I feel. It's a wonderful poem, most especially in the tension between the spontaneous flow of it and the order that is there, intrinsically it seems.

Apart from that I want to say out of my friendship with you, that I hope the pain of this is all more or less behind you.

[qimissung]

Thank you ~Sophia~. I always feel like I've done something when you like my work.

Thank you, Silas. I love that you got a flash of 'the green eye of the little yellow god.' Just mentioning Kathmandu perhaps doesn't or shouldn't be enought to be that evocative, but I was trying to allude to a feeling of mysticism. Mostly this is supposed to be a metaphorical observation on the limits of language. As to your other question, I was just playing around with the words and thought, well, why not? It's hardly anything compared to the way Dylan Thomas or Walt Whiman could use words and language, I know. So, Silas, is it melodic enough to keep, or should I switch it back?

So, Prince, this particualr incident did not happen to me, although I have had both the experience of language serving my needs, and having it fail me completely. Thank you for reading, and for your kind words.

[a_little_wisp]

Breathtakingly aching. The last two lines of each stanza are poems within themselves. The whole thing seems to move in a slow and gentle way that enables the reader to feel the depth of each word. I can feel that the moment takes place in an entirely different world than my own, and that really does something for me - agreed with Sophia, the word 'Kathmandu' has some magic to it as well. Lovely, as always, Qimissung!

[Silas Thorne]

As to your other question, I was just playing around with the words and thought, well, why not? It's hardly anything compared to the way Dylan Thomas or Walt Whiman could use words and language, I know. So, Silas, is it melodic enough to keep, or should I switch it back?



I think it depends sensewise whether you want a mere darkened street or a merely fluttering, doesn't it?
But although fluttering seems to go well at the beginning of this line, I feel the line stands out among the other lines of the poem in its present form, since the sentence structure is quite direct elsewhere. Just my opinion, mind.

[qimissung]

Duly noted, Silas. Thank you.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Oh, you changed this line


Merely fluttering down the darkened street

from the original "Fluttering merely" the eccentricity of which I noticed and valued! Of course it makes more literal sense the way you have it now, and I find it disconcerting when a poet appears to flout syntax just to be unusual or interesting or (God forbid) Poetic, but there is a strong case I think could be made for "Fluttering merely," the departure from 'normal' syntax mimicing perhaps a disturbance in the speaker's mind, a need to put extra, pained emphasis on "merely," on the paucity of his response...