Terracotta

[Darren White]

A few years ago I wrote this together with a friend. He's not on WF anymore.
Perhaps it's not the best poem ever technically speaking, but I've always liked it very much.

Terracotta

Alabaster pillars
reach to heights I’ve never known.
Marble indentations
feed the facets which have grown
carved before the spectacle
that time forgot to keep.
Oh these ancient sites I find
my mind decides to reap.

Sculpted statues stand there
looking down with faces stern;
painted garments scaled off
overgrown by grass and fern.
Dwarved I dwell among the mute
no figments of my mind
looking at me with those eyes
austere and far from blind

Goblets made of copper
shimmer bright the vintage vine,
amethyst and ruby
circle close atop the wine.
Tables set for many
with a feast for all to share;
here before my hungry eyes
which now can only stare.

Mossy marble benches
are my bed now for the night.
Hungry I go sleeping
in the slowly fading light
shuffle through the darkness
ghostly visions of the past
visitors from ancient times...
But sleep now comes at last.

[2020Syd2020]

Hello,

I like this a lot, it does well to give the reader a sense of the world and time moving and turning society’s monuments a s buildings into the only evidence to prove that they ever existed. It speaks of our human fragility, we build buildings higher every year, we collect rubies and jewellery and money, but we can take none of it with us and that which we leave behind is there as the natural reclaims it.

Cheers

Syd

[Foxee]

I can see why this might be a favorite, the scene is set beautifully, the contrast between the attempts to immortalize the past mattering so little to the present other than as a cryptic reminder of what has been.

"Hungry I go sleeping" is a marvelous line both in how it sounds and the context.

Thanks for sharing this, it's a good read on a snowy Sunday afternoon.