This Poem was Submitted By: Mark Steven Scheffer On Date: 2015-02-19 22:06:46 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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At the Grave of Hart Crane

                                Her swell is soft today. Someone has poured gin on her throbbing shoulders,                                 and her spasm purrs, as she merely remembers the exacerbation of exorcise.                                 You watched on the shore and vowed her Melville’s tomb, and the years-later lady                                      acknowledges                                 your marriage in irony, now as when her heart burst on the bottom                                 of the Caribbean. Now the scuttling singers of your shadow zigzag over                                 her young white poet, vestiged by shark.                                  Her buoys say, mark, and the tide churns in this your grave.                                  You are the ghost of monody, drowned beyond reach of the pirate hands                                      of time and money.                                  Our world is victim of those and diverse hands, we wreckage with you sifted                                      by her love,                                 not those hands that stalked you on land, giving your head horns                                 after high noon on the walls and streets of Mexico.                                  It does not matter on page or out there, in the all-spirit where you are.                                  Those hands could not hold your fabulous shadow from wombs where you sleep,                                 your skull beyond coxcomb or crown where we hear but not find you,                                      with the breathing, heaving memories of your widow, the sea. 

Copyright © February 2015 Mark Steven Scheffer

Additional Notes:
Read by me: https://soundcloud.com/msscheffer/at-the-grave-of-hart-crane


This Poem was Critiqued By: James C. Horak On Date: 2015-02-21 09:37:17
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
What are the three elements of good poetry? Imagery,imagery, imagery and here you prevail. Good to see your work again. JCH


This Poem was Critiqued By: Marcia L McCaslin On Date: 2015-02-19 22:29:17
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
Mark! So glad to see your work again. Well I went to Wikipedia to read up on Hart Crane so I could possibly tell where you were coming from. Sounds like his life and death were both enigmas, and I think your poem describes these enigmas very well, alluding at things but not able to draw a conclusion, b/c--well, no one knows for sure. It does puzzle me, though, Mark, why poets like Hart Crane and Sylvia Plath find the path to suicide so deliciously lighted, as though of all paths, it is by far the best one. I don't live in that world. I don't have a suicide path. My path to gracious living is the only lighted path I have. But you have gathered threads from all over and tried to tie the ends--if it worked or not, I do not know. Thanks for posting. Great to see you back. We need you!
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