***
Penitence
I would go out walking late upon the hill,
To greet the primal forces of the storm
And drown my small and fragile will
In the impersonal power of its shapeless form.
To let its icy lashes score my skin
And, lifting me up from off the earth,
To feel it scour my being deep within
And erase the remains of my meagre worth.
For all that I have lacked the courage of
My own convictions, and for such times
As I did falter in the face of love
And hid from you. My selfish crimes
Of a self-doubting insecurity,
By which ties I bound my heart up tight,
From the most esteemed, fastest to flee
In the mad rush to prove my fears right.
So let the winds enfold me as I climb,
And rage through all the corridors of me
To find where I’ve been hiding all this time
And throw down the walls of my sanctuary.
To consume me in its vast seething rush,
So much greater than I could ever grow
To be or comprehend, yet now its crush
Be all that I could ever hope to know.
My heart’s corroded cables proved too frail
To anchor me fast to the soft sea bed
And withstand the wrath of the tyrant gale
So let Nature’s tempest now take me instead.
To slice me through with its merciless claws
And open up each hidden, twisted part,
Scour out the holes of my faults and flaws
And subsume me deep within its wild heart.
Not to erase my allegory of wrongs,
Nor sand away my testament of scars
But to fill me with some more vibrant songs
And pin me back together with the stars.
Then cast me bruised and beaten back to earth
Like the rough swell rejects the stricken bark,
Yet weathered and tempered to a new worth
As a walk through ice may a new flame spark.
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wolfy_codex- As though of hemlock I had drunk
Comments
Hope you don't mind if I explore it a bit here? I love the first stanza. It has the feel of an ancient ritual, submission and sacrifice, leading to rebirth, reminds me of Mourning Sun, but I am very Nephilim at the moment, so that is a compliment. It's beautifully put.
Stanza two must be the more personal aspect you alluded to. It seems a total change in tack and takes a bit of unpicking. I ponder, is it nature you have fled from, or another person or yourself? My uncertainty is not negative, it makes the poem feel more complex, and I like being surprised and challenged in this way.
Three makes me wonder if you seek death? Do you see it as the only way to rebuild: total destruction, you submit to a higher power which will destroy you? Are we in the realms of religion here, I wonder?
Fourth verse again is more obscure. What is the soft sea bed? I am unsure what it represents, but I feel it relates to stanza two. They are sisters, standing apart from the odd verses, this even pair. Is there a proper poetic name for this technique? It is arresting, again I do not seek to criticise, I merely ponder.
And the ending gives hope. The 'me' in the poem doesn't want to forget their past mistakes or be absolved of them, but to be remade by the higher power whilst retaining this knowledge. The poem is then a spiritual journey it seems. Enlightenment gained through the trials of experience with nature as the facilitator. I like it.
Is any of that what you meant or have I imagined my own strange tangents again? Well writ anyway, a pleasure to read as ever :-)
I'm pleased you felt I managed to capture that sense of ritual and sacrifice in the first stanza that I was going for. It is roughly inspired by an event of my own life where I did something similar, but of course for the poem its bit more dressed up for the purposes of art. Stanza two is indeed a more personal bit of musing, fragmentary as to reflect the fragmentary jumble of thoughts at a particularly emotional moment. In the personal case I did have a particular individual most in mind as the object being fled from, though also someone else and another occaision too. More generally of course there is a wish to flee from oneself, from all one's flaws and unworthiness, hopefully as a sense throughout the poem. Sometimes, emotionally the desire becomes just simply to escape, to flee from everything. I had specific events of my own to link it to, but in the poem of course I sought more universal feelings. I will say though that is not fleeing from Nature, but rather fleeing too Nature to be returned and consumed by its forces.
In stanza three there are indeed religious allusions, which links to a specific event in my own life as you're aware, but also its the more general Wordsworthian idea of Nature as a kind of religion of the sublime, but with the key word from the first stanza, it is an impersonal one of forces. As for wishing for death, there is always that sense of whilst not entirely wanting destruction it would not be entirely unwelcome. Still the wish is to be entered by the vast power of the storm that it would overcome the walls of doubt and anxiety within to expose the real self whilst all thought is blown away leaving one conscious only of the storm and the primal force of Nature.
In the case of verse four, is a degree more personal, at least the first half of it. The 'soft sea bed' is not precisely a metaphor or metonym but more just a broad allusion to first with 'soft' and 'bed' the love and warmth or whatever good thing which one has lost or spoiled (through what is perceived as one's own mistakes or unworthiness) whilst 'sea' and 'bed' links to the concept of the heart's 'anchor' cables and also to the image of the 'rough swell reject[ing] the stricken bark' in the final stanza and so perhaps connecting the image of this broken hearted individual lost in the storm to a ship in trouble at sea. Admittedly that's a bit intricate and perhaps a bit much of a challenge to ask of just three words so mayhap that bit isn't quite so effective.
As far as I'm aware there isn't any specific poetic term the technique you describe, it's just a case that I like to keep a balance in my poetry along with shifts in tone and recurring threads to link the whole together more strongly. Just my own personal style perhaps. I often seem to find of late my poetry either forms itself naturally into sonnets or a series of five octets like this. Still, indeed the ending seeks to provide hope, as you say of Enlightenment facilitated by nature, being reborn as fresh and new though not forgetting the past but cleansed and scoured by the storm which has also left some part of the vital power of nature within that fears and anxieties may be pushed aside. Admittedly such a thing does represent a degree of wishful thinking in my case, still that is essentially what the poem represents.
So, largely I think you did get more or less what I was going for, which is good, though of course with the added textures of your own knowledge and perspective which every reader has. So yays for that. I'm most glad you enjoyed this little peek into the windows of my soul. Hee. I fear it may be a fair while before I get another poem finished, but you never can tell with these things. Still, I am glad you enjoyed it and hopes all is good and well with you.
Much hugs and luffs!
Much luffs always. x.