380th Virtual Poetry Circle
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Welcome to the 380th Virtual Poetry Circle!
Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.
Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s book suggested.
Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.
Today’s poem is from Trumbull Stickney:
Mnemosyne*
It’s autumn in the country I remember.
How warm a wind blew here about the ways! And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber During the long sun-sweetened summer-days.
It’s cold abroad the country I remember.
The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain At midday with a wing aslant and limber; And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain.
It’s empty down the country I remember.
I had a sister lovely in my sight: Her hair was dark, her eyes were very sombre; We sang together in the woods at night.
It’s lonely in the country I remember.
The babble of our children fills my ears, And on our hearth I stare the perished ember To flames that show all starry thro’ my tears.
It’s dark about the country I remember.
There are the mountains where I lived. The path Is slushed with cattle-tracks and fallen timber, The stumps are twisted by the tempests’ wrath.
But that I knew these places are my own, I’d ask how came such wretchedness to cumber The earth, and I to people it alone.
It rains across the country I remember.
What do you think?
*Mnemosyne, source of the word mnemonic, was the personification of memory in Greek mythology. A Titanide, or Titaness, she was the daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and the mother of the nine Muses by her nephew Zeus