Sol was one of those
who knew the length and breadth
of Jesus, who had felt
the warmth of his footprints
on the Via Dolorosa,
deeper, sadder, after he assumed the weight of the cross,
the mortal heart pumping,
the God-given minutes of his earthly journey
slipping away...
Sol (no relation to that other Saul)
understood that history
had been broken into,
that the vaults would no longer
hold love, death, empire
as they once had done,
that all men and women,
from now on,
would be held to account.
Last edited by PrinceMyshkin; 03-15-2009 at 07:23 PM. Reason: "slipping" in place of "ticking"
This piece is alive with the wisdom of Sol(omon.)
And it has sol.
I am curious to know what brought this on.
I'm in love with The Vinegar Man and Mr. Tanner, but be careful, it could just as easily be you.
"If you're going to write you better have somewhere to come from." Flannery O'Connor
VEEERY NICE!
Although, when I first read the title, I was thinking, "the sun? Is it about the sun!?" and "sol - la ti do!? Is about music? I love music!"
And then I read it, and it wasn't either, but I still loved it! So very wise.
"Understood that history
had been broken into..."
I love that. I don't know why, sorry. :/
Then she would run until morning to ease the ache; swifter than rain, swift as loss, racing to catch up with the time when she had known nothing at all but the sweetness of being herself.
-- Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
Many thanks, Auntie...Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Do we ever fully know what brought on certain of our poems? All I remember of the origin of this one was the single syllable, “Sol,” that popped into my mind, in response to which I had the feeling of a man I might have known, who would have been homely - in the sense of unpretentious and not particularly remarkable. There must have been an as yet untapped thought of Saul of the N.T., that towering, pedagogic figure who had never actually known Christ but virtually invented Christianity.
So there was a built-in inclination to draw the one somewhat in contrast to the other. That placed me at the time of Jesus’ life and death. After the relatively easy composition of the first stanza, I fumbled with some further details of Sol’s life, his marriage, the two orchards he and his wife tended - one of apricots, the other of prickly pears - and their two sons: the one who was wild but more beloved of Sol; the other, more dutiful one who, after Sol’s death, sought for his footprints in the orchards but never found any.
But I discarded that in favour of the existing stanza...
Exquisite!
Loved the second stanza best.
You know I didn't think too much of this poem at first, but it has grown on me. I think Firefangle is pointing to this outstanding metaphor:
This took a while to settle in, but I do now think it's a fine piece Prince.Sol (no relation to that other Saul)
understood that history
had been broken into,
that the vaults would no longer
hold love, death, empire
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
In this day and age, I'd have expected you to think of SOLvency!VEEERY NICE!
Although, when I first read the title, I was thinking, "the sun? Is it about the sun!?" and "sol - la ti do!? Is about music? I love music!"Some of my favourite lines in others' poems I don't fully understand at first or even later, but they register with a tickle or more of intuition. Thanks.
And then I read it, and it wasn't either, but I still loved it! So very wise.
"Understood that history
had been broken into..."
I love that. I don't know why, sorry. :/
Thanks, and at the risk of sounding like the following:
A Jewsh mother bought her son a red and a blue tie for his birthday. The next time she saw him he was wearing the red tie.
"So," she said, "you didn't like the blue one?"
Personally I like both the red and the blue one...
I would respond as a Jewish mother, but I don't know your formal name for which Jerry must be a nickname.
It would go something like, "Jerry (but it would be Gerald, Jerrod, etc), you've worn the red one three times since I saw you wearing the blue one, a mother knows."
My mother used to buy me hideous shirts and when I saw her afterward, would remark in a similar fashion, "Oh is that one of the shirts I got you? No, those had horizontal stripes, didn't they?" Gentile mothers are masters at passive/aggressive.
If it is a comfort for you to know, I also thoroughly enjoyed the first stanza as well. However, "ticking away" put me off just a little, if you were to press me to give a reason for my preference.
Until it came time to register me in regular school, because of my maternal grandmother's presence in our lives, I was known by a Yiddish diminutive of Joseph, which my parents had intended as my first name: Yosl. Then - as the family history goes - my mother stood in line to register me, in a secular school, and decided that "Yosl" wouldn't do and that "Joseph" was too stuffy a name so she invented Jerry on the spot. I later overcame my embarassment at so ethnic a name and partially reclaimed it.Which reminds me of one of the few "Gentile" jokes I know:
It would go something like, "Jerry (but it would be Gerald, Jerrod, etc), you've worn the red one three times since I saw you wearing the blue one, a mother knows."
My mother used to buy me hideous shirts and when I saw her afterward, would remark in a similar fashion, "Oh is that one of the shirts I got you? No, those had horizontal stripes, didn't they?" Gentile mothers are masters at passive/aggressive.
This non-Jewish guy calls home late one Sunday afternoon to inform his mother that he won't be able to make it for dinner after all.
"Okay," she says.
(Actually it's a Jewish joke in disguise!)"Ticking away," though I didn't dwell on it, would have seemed right to me because I was writing as much as I could from the point of view of as ordinary a man as I could make him, and that phrase seemed so... unelevated, so commonplace by contrast with the enormity of what Sol had witnessed.
If it is a comfort for you to know, I also thoroughly enjoyed the first stanza as well. However, "ticking away" put me off just a little, if you were to press me to give a reason for my preference.
Many thanks, Virgil.
Not much later... I'm persuaded, and am going to change it. Now that you point it out "ticking away" has too overty a 20th c. feeling, the result of a misspent youth reading LeCarre, Eric Ambler et al. Although I didn't consciously aim at this, I believe the language everywhere else is not specific to any age. Thanks for pointing that out.If it is a comfort for you to know, I also thoroughly enjoyed the first stanza as well. However, "ticking away" put me off just a little, if you were to press me to give a reason for my preference.
Something really touching, new and penetrating!
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
Thank you, Blaze.
Thanks, Silas, that's a line I'm proud of.
I don't understand the religious bits either, but I liked these lines, too:
history
had been broken into,
that the vaults would no longer
hold love, death, empire
as they once had done,
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