In The Silence
Lament of the Christian Mind
In the silence, I find refuge, A dusk sky, great sublimity, But the golden hour haunts me, O Rev'rie, leave me be.
Time rips old pages over, Mine aging face withers in the fray, A stale heart hardens me, O Saudade, how you torture your slave!
Nightfall knows the light fades, Eyes veiled in waxing shades, Sun abandons me blind, Mind lost to yesterday.
‘Tis there, heartache burns me, Drowning in the what-ifs of hellfire, Flames quench the smallest tear, Poor sorrow loses its mercied cry.
Lord, Lord, Lord! I pray thee, Wake me, Now.
I cannot bear the dark of slumber, Nor the things I so wish were not so, Regret hath dragged me down, down under, Where is comfort for a sinful soul?
The mind plays nemesis, A virulent brain of wicked thoughts; Radiant infections— A Baal of Babylon.
In the daunt of dead days, I cry out to heaven for grace: Save Me God! From the depths of grave shame.
In the silence, Jesus answers,
Peace be still,
Rest,
In my name.I creep toward His holy place, Fearful, And so, Afraid.
Below,
The Gates of Hades array to raid,
And Satan shrieks, KILL all of the Saved! Run, run! Lord, I, Faster, God, I! fall. All my hope rests in salvation, A day when all is made right, The place where peace is perfect, The body whose heart cannot lie.
‘Til then, I cherish thy moments, Resting in God with mind clear, And this old wretch disappears, And the archangels shout a VICT’RY cheer.
Thereaft, the legions of hell ravage this dust, And the fallen world returns so drear; 'Tis there, I tremble in the silence, Praying, O God, O God, draw near.
Author’s Note
As of late, I have taken an interest in the architecture of prose, especially in poetic verse. When I began dabbling with poetry, I started out writing purely from the imagination, as many typical poems do that I read on the web. They read as more of a stream of imaginative consciousness, loosely formed, and honestly, quite odd.
And to be frank, hailing cryptic poetry as groundbreaking for the sole purpose of it being difficult to understand does not make the lords of literature rumble the skies with thunder. Subjectively, I prefer clearly laid out thematic and narrative poetry. While I have no gripes with profundity, as I do lend myself to deeper thoughts, I think that some writers may have a false sense of grandeur with vain complexity.
However, classic literature is a haven of methodologies and conventions that light the way so that we can avoid the pitfalls that have ensnared many of us modern writers. With that said, I think the lack of disciplined study in literary forms stems from a lack of quality education, especially public.
That said, I attempted something different in this poem than typical modern free verse. When I wrote the first draft it was okay, but the meter was all over the place.
No method behind the madness.
Not really.
The left side of my brain invaded the chaos of my right and demanded:
Structure. Order. Design.
This need for particular structure led me down a road to discover more about the methods of Dante Alighieri. There are others in the past who put a lot of emphasis on structure, stress, syllables, and meaning, but Dante infused his Divine Comedy with superior mathematical depth. It is saturated with numerical structure. Every detail of his poem was planned beyond what you would think at first glance. Nothing was an accident (the details of which could make for its own article). But suffice it to say, his deliberate theological mathematization of prose is quite extraordinary.
I have researched numerical meaning before (especially Hebrew) but never thought about applying it through poetry. Once I started, I found the mental task to be relieving since free, unbridled blobs of gestative thought were falling under the direction of an orderly force.
While there are no hard and fast ‘rules’ to modern poetry, there is something to be said of the greats who have walked before us with pinpointed precision. As said many times, we stand on the shoulders of giants. As I learn more about such works, whether it be from Poe, Dante, Homer, Elliot, or Tennyson, it is stimulating to incorporate some of their flavor and methods into my own so that their leaps and strides carry on in us wayward writers.
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