Yea, though I walk

[PrinceMyshkin]

Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of the living,
I am but another shadow,
subsumed by the more or less
pale greys.

Between grey and paler grey
lie lives of striving
and of slipping back,
of quiet ceremony
and loud, unmerited applause.

We are just innuendoes,
nuances,
the hiss
of some whispered hint
already gone by.

[DieterM]

I like the calm tone and tranquil acceptance of your poem, prince. Especially the lines
"We are just innuendoes,
nuances,
the hiss
of some whispered hint
already gone by"
did it for me! I think I'll have another read this week-end when I'll be in a calmer environment and can let the poem sink slowly in...

[Hawkman]

I really like this one Prince. Although the reflective tone is melancholic it is a pleasing read for a quiet reflective moment.

Live and be well - H

[Jerrybaldy]

I shall fear no evil. This sounds like the wisened musings of a sage and come to think of it...........
BW
JB

[Delta40]

I wondered if it would flow better if you swapped V2 with V3

[hillwalker]

Quite a poem - I particularly liked the second stanza.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks Dieter, Hawkman, JerryB, Hillwalker and


I wondered if it would flow better if you swapped V2 with V3

I don't think so because 2 is a more leisurely expansion of the theme whereas 3 is meant to deliver the emotional kick.

[AuntShecky]

Well, despite the usual economy of your epigrams, there seems to be a lot of activity in this one. It begins with a Biblical reference and includes a Platonic allusion. (cf. "In Plato's Cave" by Delmore Schwartz.) The idea of souls-- called "shades" --ever-roaming throughout eternity appears in the works of Homer and Virgil.

Looked up the spelling of "innuendoes." I thought it was just an "s." The Spell-Check on Pong II (my PC) accepts both spelling as does my trusty old print dictionary. The point is "innuendo" also comes from the Latin, and originally referred to a brief abstract atop a legal document, a précis of what the document was about. Hence, our modern connotation of "hint."

Because the subject of the sentence was "lives, "I was wondering if "lie" was right, not "lay," the former meaning to recline and the latter "to place." But "lie" has a second less innocuous meaning, of which we all know. So there's a little wordplay going on there.

So the gist of this is that everybody who has lived has, in a sense, already lived before? I hope this piece isn't about reincarnation. Or something even worse, as Neitzsche's theory that we're all doomed to live the same miserable lives over and over again for all eternity.

But maybe you mean that we're all connected somehow? That's a much sunnier way to interpret this, but the images in your verse -- "grey" and the aforementioned shades, etc. are all dark. Dark!

[Silas Thorne]

I really like the second or third strophes of this one, though I was hoping in the hiss for a voiced h or a sibillant s in that last line which didn't come.
I'm not sure why you need to even use the 'yea, though I walk' line in this one at all though. Couldn't you have worked off it without using that line, or even just used the line 'valley of shadow'? The poetry in the second and third strophes show your thoughts are rich enough without it.

[Haunted]

Who can make gray into something so rich as the ending stanza but Prince! I like it for it's meditative quality, the way I can see the semi opacity of our lives as though we are half in this world and half as spirits...

[PrinceMyshkin]

Many thanks Haunted and Silas, and


Because the subject of the sentence was "lives, "I was wondering if "lie" was right, not "lay," the former meaning to recline and the latter "to place." But "lie" has a second less innocuous meaning, of which we all know. So there's a little wordplay going on there.
the present tense of the intransitive "lie" (as in to recline) is indeed what I intended.


So the gist of this is that everybody who has lived has, in a sense, already lived before? I hope this piece isn't about reincarnation. Or something even worse, as Neitzsche's theory that we're all doomed to live the same miserable lives over and over again for all eternity.

But maybe you mean that we're all connected somehow? That's a much sunnier way to interpret this, but the images in your verse -- "grey" and the aforementioned shades, etc. are all dark. Dark!

None of the above, really, but more like the Plato's Cave analogy you cited: the idea that we are possibly less substantial, i.e., less "real" than we think we are or real in some other way than we think we are.