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Young Writers Society


12+

Cycle 1, Motif 1

by Werthan


All doctrine is false,

And all theory a worthless bauble.

The world is pushed over

At the foot of a beast.

All the spheres join in unheard chorus,

But the Earth is silent among them.

From the depths of the abyss

Rises the trunk of the great tree

And it reaches to heights just as bleak.

The worm lies coiled at that tree’s base

And the worm eats its own tail rather than the root of that tree

Time is the name of that worm,

And it has the neck of the first man in a chokehold.

Thus the whole Earth is silenced.

But a chorus gathers around the tree from the edges of the world,

Drunken in liquor stolen from heaven,

And the imprisoned titan beats the drum in the tree’s trunk.

Then only that titan’s shadow.

All the chorus is broken in melodic dissonance

By the sound of the beating primordial thunder-drum.

Thus goes the Song of the Earth,

Man rises, takes a few steps, falls to dust,

And the wheel of time turns again.

All the cosmos is but a spark from a flame,

And I learned far more from one spark

Than all my measly decades of study.

Let us dance of the edge of the world,

On the dying ember of this Earth!

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68 Reviews

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Reviews: 68

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Sun Mar 26, 2017 3:47 pm
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Midnightmoon wrote a review...



Hello! I didn't notice anything that isn't already in the review below. :). So I'll just tell you how much I like it. :D. It's a really deep poem, and I really like that. It speaks so many things.

"Thus goes the Song of the Earth,

Man rises, takes a few steps, falls to dust,

And the wheel of time turns again.

All the cosmos is but a spark from a flame,

And I learned far more from one spark

Than all my measly decades of study.

Let us dance of the edge of the world,

On the dying ember of this Earth!"

I have to say, this is my favorite line. Keep writing!




Werthan says...


Thanks!



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1334 Reviews

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Wed Mar 22, 2017 11:44 am
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Hannah wrote a review...



Hey there! I am not quite sure if this is referencing another literary work or not, but I am just gonna give it a quick review as it is. Feel free to ignore the review if it's not helpful at all because of my lack of knowledge of the allusion! No hard feelings!

So I started out really liking the wide images that you were giving from the very beginning of this poem. I could see each of them clearly, felt them in a really expansive space that gave an enormous scale to this poem and its message, which I think you were going for. But here's the first place that tripped me up:

But a chorus gathers around the tree from the edges of the world,

Drunken in liquor stolen from heaven,

And the imprisoned titan beats the drum in the tree’s trunk.

Then only that titan’s shadow.


So I thought chorus only referred to voices, and was expected you to name who was singing that chorus, so it was jarring that suddenly I was introduced to another character (that titan). And then, as this section ends, it feels like the sentence just kind of falls apart. The titan is beating the drum in the tree's trunk, then only its shadow? What does that mean? Does it mean that suddenly the only visible image is that shadow? It doesn't seem to contrast well with the SOUNDS that I'm getting in the previous three lines, like to go from sounds to an image in contrast. I hope that makes sense.

The other part where I'm suddenly sucked out of the poem is here:

And I learned far more from one spark

Than all my measly decades of study.


Suddenly, there's a speaker. After such a wide-ranging introduction, I am drawn in so close to an individual, and that's really jarring. I was not aware that anyone else was watching this procession of images with me. It also shatters that expansive tone, and because I don't get any more information before the poem ends, I'm left really confused as to who just spoke to me.

Maybe that's what you were going for?? Who knows! If you have any questions or comments about this review, or would like to talk about it, though, feel free to PM me or reply here.

Thanks for sharing!

Hannah




Werthan says...


This was supposed to be a bit jarring, but I think I might not have gotten it quite right. I could get away with more experimental things without turning into what most-people would consider full-blown experimental writing at least, but I still think I need to brush up this idea generally (and yes, this is "referencing" something else, well, it ties into something else rather complicatedly).




“If lightning is the anger of the gods, then the gods are concerned mostly about trees.”
— Lao Tzu