Headless Wisdom
There, that tall headless stone,
hand still out, receiving,
where sculptor’s hand mocked,
and heart has fled,
a life never really lived, yet watching
from above, ruling the city
longer than any other king before.
If lips could move,
this dismantled monument might speak,
“Hark! Small children below my feet,
much you have yet to see.
When your flesh is as ancient and worn as me,
King of these lands, I still will be.
Headless, I may be, but far
does my arm with wisdom still reach.”
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Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,854 Reviews
Elinor - Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked it! It was great meeting you in the chat as well.
And yeah, it's not my normal style, so I'm kind of breaking it in a bit. It's not 100% to my liking yet. I'll just have to experiment.
Suz - First of all, thanks! I'm glad you don't dislike it at least.
So I positively love the irony in headless wisdom, being that the brain is in the head and so all intelligence is considered to be in the head... put you already know that, obviously, since it's your poem! I just have to say, I love it.
I don't really understand these lines, which makes it hard for me to understand that bit of the poem. How is the sculptor's had mocking it, and whose heart/why/where/when has it fled? I realize that was a very silly question to ask, just the way it's written, but I really can't understand those lines. =/
For some reason I also think the line before would sound better as, "hand still out, still receiving". But I like parallelism
I feel like on line four here, after "see" you should have a period instead of a comma. Minor complaint!
I also don't like that in the line following this section you repeat "be". I'm not sure how you could get around it though, but it sounds clunky.
I do like the idea behind this poem, mostly the irony. I can't praise it too much - not because it's bad but it's not my kind of poem. I like poems with layers, and this one is beautiful yet straight forward. Please! don't take it as "this is a bad poem I hate it!" It's just not my style of poetry.
I hope this helped!
Hi Yoha! Ooh, this was a nice poem. It was short and sweet, with nice imagery, and you use a fresh, original concept-just the kind of poem that pleases me. I think I'll add it as one of my favorites here on YWS!
My one problem is that, while the reader knows you're referring to him, you don't use any kind of name or pronoun, and that confuses things a little bit, especially in the first bit. Maybe the statue has a name, or you could just call it, "him" or "her", depending on the gender, or it. Just so long as you something to refer the statue to!
Anyway, I liked this! PM me if you have questions.
-Elinor