This Poem was Submitted By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2006-02-27 09:19:24 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

To Listen to Music While Reading this Poem, just Click Here!

Click Here To add this poem to your "Voting Possibilities" list!


My Sometime Shepherd

He’s blind like me, and like me feels his way From interstice to hardened northern rock. And yet if it were mine for just one day  To use his eyes, I’d better shepherd my own flock. He ranges wide as if he saw it all As angels do, and not by human sense. Impervious to ordinary gall He stills and understands, where I would take offence. I do not see what lights his eyes, what truth Can guide him to inter a truth in rhyme. Teiresias he is and Oedipus Am I, who honour him with this imprinted crime.

Copyright © February 2006 Mark Andrew Hislop

Additional Notes:
I can dredge through the vault too, matey boy.


This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas H. Smihula On Date: 2006-03-07 09:08:00
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.28571
Now this is one of my favorites of yours Mark. Like how you start this out showing blindness yet one must sheppard his own flock. You three stanza give it the structure needed and proper length for this thought. Well done was a joy to read. Thanks for sharing one of your archives...


This Poem was Critiqued By: James C. Horak On Date: 2006-03-06 11:52:04
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
When I first read about Lycurgus, the Spartan Law-giver, in Plutarch's Lives, his was, to me, the most endearing of all inspiration a young boy could have. In ways he had helped "spread my wings" that, I'm certain, even today bear fruit. Your first line and verse express that the mentor to which you're enamoured is mortal, of so much more depth than the god-heads we erect so much more superciliously. Immediately, the read becomes an adventure, instead of simply an expectation of redundance. "Impervious to ordinary gall" is a splendid way of characterizing this individual and your self-gauge is commentary cutting swath both upon the poem as semi-narrative and personal. Poetic license at its best. The affiliation between you both becomes co-conspiracy when you end the poem with, "honour him with this imprinted crime" simply because (and all reviewers should expect sole words in poems to have these distinctive meanings)you use the modifier, "this" instead of, his. The quality is always IN a viewer when it has this quality for by merely appreciating you observe indisputably a value to the emulation. This cannot successfully be except in poetic rendering without some degree of self-deprecation... hence the co-conspiracy element. Dissuaded elegantly enough, as you do in another successful poem. Creating, again, a quandary of sorts over my struggle to be fair in my voting allotment. Crap. JCH
This Poem was Critiqued By: arnie s WACHMAN On Date: 2006-03-01 09:44:56
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.85714
I have often wondered how people like Stevie Wonder can learn to play an instruement like he does. Today I go for my cataract surgery...so this has some meaning for me.You may have dredged this one up however it is a well written "imprinted" crime. Good on ya mate!
This Poem was Critiqued By: Mark Steven Scheffer On Date: 2006-02-27 14:39:23
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
MAH, I wish I knew a good lawyer. I've used "northern rock." And my rock was hard too. I'll post the original. There's people who want to be shepherds, and there's people who want to be sheep, and there's people who want to be left alone. Perhaps I should shut up, then. Sure, belittle yourself . . . as you play the King part. Truth shouldn't be interred. If you meant this in praise, maybe you should rethink that part. If you think, with what's been going on here, I'm going to hazard a guess as to who Tiresias is . . . Later, MSS PS - If i were wrong, it would just feed certain sharks in the water
Poetry Contests Online at The Poetic Link

Click HERE to return to ThePoeticLink.com Database Page!