In Ashkelon

[PrinceMyshkin]

A man walks the streets
alone in Ashkelon
near the ancient seaport.

If life is not a mystery,
what is?

Einstein said
he wanted to see the face of God

Who walks the streets, perhaps,
alone in Ashkelon
near the most ancient seaport.

[Sampson]

This is a remarkably effective, haunting piece Prince! As ever, the short length heightens this sensation. I love the way you reference Einstein. A poem for the mind... Thank you

[qimissung]

It is haunting. I love the way you bring it back to the beginning, and the face of God. For someone who professes not to believe, you certainly write some beautiful things for those who might, or do.

[PrinceMyshkin]

It is haunting. I love the way you bring it back to the beginning, and the face of God. For someone who professes not to believe, you certainly write some beautiful things for those who might, or do.

Ha! I just sent you a PM hoping you would comment on this. Thanks. Although it doesn't strictly apply to me, I've always been amused by & sympathetic with someone who wrote: "I don't believe in God, but I miss him."

[AuntShecky]

I'll have to look up Ashkelon in my low-tech Atlas, or maybe risk clicking on "Google map."

Re: the text of your poem itself, I would move the word "alone" closer to the man that it describes; as it is now it modifies "streets." Maybe "a lone man," or "a man alone" or "a solitary man"???

The use of Einstein in your poem is inspired, as he often mentioned "God" in his writings,notably "God doesn't play dice with the universe." Me Irish mother used to tell us to be kind to everyone we saw on the streets as you never know it could be Jesus in disguise. Of course, that advice does conflict with the wise if clichéd warning against talking to strangers.

[PrinceMyshkin]

This is a remarkably effective, haunting piece Prince! As ever, the short length heightens this sensation. I love the way you reference Einstein. A poem for the mind... Thank you

Many thanks, Sampson. You still wearing your hair long?

[PrinceMyshkin]

I'll have to look up Ashkelon in my low-tech Atlas, or maybe risk clicking on "Google map."

Re: the text of your poem itself, I would move the word "alone" closer to the man that it describes; as it is now it modifies "streets." Maybe "a lone man," or "a man alone" or "a solitary man"???

The use of Einstein in your poem is inspired, as he often mentioned "God" in his writings,notably "God doesn't play dice with the universe." Me Irish mother used to tell us to be kind to everyone we saw on the streets as you never know it could be Jesus in disguise. Of course, that advice does conflict with the wise if clichéd warning against talking to strangers.

Of course, having gotten used to it that way, I just can't see


A lone man walks the streets
in Ashkelon

and somehow I feel that the way I wrote it has a significantly different emphasis from your grammatically more appropriate suggestion. In my preferred version we meet the man first and shortly afterward learn that he's alone; whereas as you would have it, we're invited to feel empathy or pity for him from the start, as if he were an intrinsically lone man; as if he'd been born that way and never had any other choice.

[Hawkman]

Hi Prince,

I loved this and agree completely with your last. It's so evocative.

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hi Prince,

I loved this and agree completely with your last. It's so evocative.

H

Many thanks, H.

J.

[Bar22do]

A man walks the streets
alone in Ashkelon
near the ancient seaport.

If life is not a mystery,
what is?

Einstein said
he wanted to see the face of God

Who walks the streets, perhaps,
alone in Ashkelon
near the most ancient seaport.




Oh, life can be so many things and death too is a mystery. Though sometimes uncovered:
In Ashkelon seaport brothel's graveyard a place was discovered with only tiny little remains of bones, of new born or baby boys, as research found out. One doesn't need to think much to know what used to happen there and why.
Old Einstein was so right about relativity, and to me Ashkelon has unhappy connotations (and not only because of the common grave). I believe this very relativity (of our experiences, memories, associations...) causes that, ultimately, we are all alone, even though aloneness doesn't last that long (but is it a relief?)... As great Salvadore Quasimodo put it:

"Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole
ed è subito sera"

(or - in my approximate translation -

"Everyone stands alone at the heart of Earth,
pierced by a sunbeam,
and it is soon evening")

When Einstein, like many others, wanted to see the face of God, I wonder if he knew that "face" meant "mask", and that the ancient (more appropriate) word for it was "interiority". Had he known, it would have taught him how to look. I imagine there were times when looking at a fellow man was seeing the "face of God" (for how else "interiority" would describe a face). Also, had this grown into culture(s), aloneness would have not been at all: in solitude or in society, humans would have naturally had a sense of belonging, and would have enjoyed mutual understanding in some unifying light... but here I am starting to ramble...

Thanks for your thought that of course could have also occurred in connection with Jaffa or Alexandria... and not lose of its Presence!

[Virgil]

Of course, having gotten used to it that way, I just can't see


A lone man walks the streets
in Ashkelon

and somehow I feel that the way I wrote it has a significantly different emphasis from your grammatically more appropriate suggestion. In my preferred version we meet the man first and shortly afterward learn that he's alone; whereas as you would have it, we're invited to feel empathy or pity for him from the start, as if he were an intrinsically lone man; as if he'd been born that way and never had any other choice.

I have to disagree with Aunty here. "Alone" is an adverb here and modifies walks, and so is free to move within that clause. The original way you wrote it is fine and actually sounds better to my ear. It sounds more colloquial, or at least coloquial to my Brooklyn upbringing.

Initially I didn't think much of the poem. I had never heard of Ashkelon. But after I looked i up it made sense and pulled everything together and I do think it's a good poem.


Ashkelon or Ashqelon (Hebrew: אַשְׁקְלוֹן‎ (audio) (help·info); Latin: Ascalon; Akkadian: Isqalluna) is a coastal city in the South District of Israel. The ancient seaport of Ashkelon dates back to the Bronze Age. In the course of its history, it has been ruled by the Canaanites, the Philistines, The Israelites, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Muslims, the British and the Crusaders. It was destroyed by the Mamluks in 1270 and fell into disuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkelon

[paperleaves]

I love the idea of this nameless, faceless man, strolling the port aimlessly, and your reference to Einstein. This is remarkably simple yet catching.

love
Kate

[PrinceMyshkin]

I have to disagree with Aunty here. "Alone" is an adverb here and modifies walks, and so is free to move within that clause. The original way you wrote it is fine and actually sounds better to my ear. It sounds more colloquial, or at least coloquial to my Brooklyn upbringing.

Initially I didn't think much of the poem. I had never heard of Ashkelon. But after I looked i up it made sense and pulled everything together and I do think it's a good poem.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkelon

In (shameful) truth I knew little about Ashkelon except for the to me, delicious exoticness and beauty of the name. It sounded (as it is) ancient and in that way suited my feeling that this man or any other might have walked the streets alone anywhere in the world, at any period of time.

The addition of "most" before ancient in the last line was a covert suggestion that God Himself might have entered earth via that seaport.

[Pendragon]

If life is not a mystery,
what is?




Very deep words to live by. Reminds me of Lewis Carrol's ending line "life what is it but a dream".

[hack]

Ashkelon, The City of Athtarat, is a place of deep mystery, it's exact age only is only a guess. It was an important city/town in Caanan and the seaport there made it a trading hub for the entire Levant and beyond. Canaanite, Hebrew, and Phoenician traditions attributed Ashkelon to a race of gods and giants. Ashkelon has accommodated many gods during it's long history. The bustle of the ancient seaport long gone, it is now a place for quiet reflection, but only in your poem. This piece is very special and evocative to me, thank you, as always My Prince...peace...

In Retenu
Holy Ashkelon
Was cut
From the blue-green sea
Raised up
As a mount
Upon thy hands
Oh, Athtarat
A gift to The God of the North
A seed
For the Son of Dagon

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks for your thought that of course could have also occurred in connection with Jaffa or Alexandria... and not lose of its Presence!

If you mean "Presence" as I intuit you do, the whole of that vision turned on Ashkelon. Would you yourself have ventured to ignore or contradict the Presence?

[Bar22do]

If you mean "Presence" as I intuit you do, the whole of that vision turned on Ashkelon. Would you yourself have ventured to ignore or contradict the Presence?

On the contrary, it seemed important to me to bring the attention to It. Wherever the vision turned on, Presence was in your poem, or - Art.

[PrinceMyshkin]

On the contrary, it seemed important to me to bring the attention to It. Wherever the vision turned on, Presence was in your poem, or - Art.


Thank you. Vision and art are surely the closest of collaborators. A grandmother or grandfather may present the child with a toy, but the wonder is always what the child does with it.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Ashkelon, The City of Athtarat, is a place of deep mystery, it's exact age only is only a guess. It was an important city/town in Caanan and the seaport there made it a trading hub for the entire Levant and beyond. Canaanite, Hebrew, and Phoenician traditions attributed Ashkelon to a race of gods and giants. Ashkelon has accommodated many gods during it's long history. The bustle of the ancient seaport long gone, it is now a place for quiet reflection, but only in your poem. This piece is very special and evocative to me, thank you, as always My Prince...peace...

In Retenu
Holy Ashkelon
Was cut
From the blue-green sea
Raised up
As a mount
Upon thy hands
Oh, Athtarat
A gift to The God of the North
A seed
For the Son of Dagon

Thanks to the information provided by Bar, I am now aware that the actual Ashkelon is not as I imagined it, but of course neither is Shangdu the Xanadu as Coleridge dreamt or imagined it and yet it is still Xanadu in our minds.

Thank you for visiting the Ashkelon of my poem and for your own poetic response to it.

[Le_Iris]

I'm sorry, is it a blank verse?

[PrinceMyshkin]

I'm sorry, is it a blank verse?

Oh, I hope not! The expression you wanted was simply "blank verse" (without the article. "A blank verse" would be one without anything to say!)

But here is the definition of "blank verse": http://www.google.ca/search?q=blank+verse&hl=en-us&sourceid=gd&rlz=1Q1GGLD_enCA368CA368&aq=t

Mine - like almost all my poems - is written in what would be called "free verse," that is, verse without end-rhymes or regular metre. The danger in writing that way, is that it is so often very close to prose. One hopes to create something of the music that can be heard even in everyday speech, or images or ideas that lift it above the common-place.

For an example of what I consider splendid examples of free verse look up the poems of William Carlos Williams:



Danse Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
If I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt around my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely...”

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

Wm Carlos Williams

[AuntShecky]

I'm sorry, is it a blank verse?

The confusion keeps hanging on, I see. Please try to make a mental note--

Blank verse, found in the works of Shakespeare, Milton, et al. is unrhymed iambic pentameter.

"Free" verse is poetry without the use of meter.

[Le_Iris]

Oh, I'm sorry for my ignorance( I'm not a fan of such kinds of verses, so I don't know much about it. But I like this one, it has a very specific atmosphere.

[blank|verse]

is it a blank verse?

Nope, it's most definitely a PrinceMyshkin - you can spot them a mile off.

(Ithangyew. I'm here all week...)

[PrinceMyshkin]

Nope, it's most definitely a PrinceMyshkin - you can spot them a mile off.

(Ithangyew. I'm here all week...)

Funny thing is I dashed off a 'poem' this morning at the cafe about having a certain manner of writing, in defense of which I ended with


I'm weak where I ought to be strong
and strong where I ought be weak.
But would you have me wear my nose
on my cheek?
but decided against posting it.

[hack]

Thanks for not posting it, it still needs work.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks for not posting it, it still needs work.

Yes, indeed, but it won't likely get that work as the whole premise of it had nothing to commend it but the chance to get some attention!