Its roots below with death entwined,
The cypress stands by the old stone;
Its loyalty lies with the bones:
The corpse that the grey stone enshrines.
And of the gnarled, blackened boughs,
A touch of death—of mourning—lies,
A sentinel for those who lay
In their eternal rest below.
And what of mortal birth and life,
If death is the eternal place
Past the momentous precipice
That slips into the afterlife?
And soon all will lay in their rest
And find life was but a sweet dream
And slumber on, in their dark sleep
That black boughs and gray stone have blessed.
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140,396 Literary Works • 673,154 Reviews
I've fallen in love with the imagery of this piece.
At first, I couldn't find anything to critique, but after reading it a few more times I realized that if you made the second line the first line it would make the piece stronger as a whole.
For one, it would fix the awkward punctuation. For two, it sets us up with a clear image of our subject right out of the gate.
Of course, your poem is great on its own. No need to change a thing,
Thanks for sharing this fascinating and thought-provoking poem about death. Death is certainly a subject that causes a lot of pondering from us humans since we fear the unknown. The poem makes a contrast between a tree that is alive and yet its roots are in contact with death. Then it suggests that our life is as a dream and compares death to sleep. Curious! That reminded me of how Jesus and Bible writers also compared death to a sleep. The difference is that he promised that there would be a day of awakening from it via a resurrection whereas the poem leaves that as an unknown.
I like the dramatic sound of gnarled roots entwining with death. Also, the stone described as old or weathered is a good touch that adds to the somber mood. I found the use of the word “precipice very appropriate. Death does seem as if we will be jumping from here to who knows where. Unconsciousness does seem like a never-ending chasm that we all fear unless we are under extreme agony and seeking a way out. So the poem does very nicely convey the dreadfulness as well as the situational irony involved in a living plant being in close physical contact with death in that manner.
Suggestions
The first line sets the expected meter at four iambic feet per line. Initial rhyme scheme is aabb. The continuation should be ccdd- eeff- But the second stanza shifts to cdcd. So my some of the recommendations are based on that.
Rhyme scheme
The following line doesn’t fit into the rhyme scheme at all.
“A sentinel for those who lay" Also the word “lay” is being used wrongly.
Meter
The cypress stands by the old stone;
[The cypress stands by weathered stone;] Preserves the iambic meter.
The corpse that the grey stone enshrines.
[The corpse the grey stone has enshrined.] or
[The corpse the grey stone now enshrines.] Preserves the iambic meter.
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All in all a good read. Looking forward to your next poems.