There Is No Death

[mackzmike]

There Is No Death
 
Blow, blow, wintry diamonds,
cloak the earth in death,
in dust, we slumber through the night,
and wait for summer’s breath.
 
While in repose my dearest,
I shall fertilize the earth,
like burning wood sends smoke to sky,
and ashes to the hearth.
 
Cogitate my shadow,
in bedded rainbow flowers,
that echo sunlit afternoons
and gloomy evening showers.
 
To Lila I surrender,
an enchanted song and dance,
pulsing, throbbing, flowing, changing,
subjective lucid trance.
 
There is no death.
Like rolling waves,
that fear the dreaded shore,
our lives, evaporating dreams,
eternal at their core.
 
 
 

[Achebe]

Hi Mac - as this is 'Mild', the expectation is for slightly harsher crit. 
You'll need to work on your images and make them more consistent.
Also, it helps if you stick to one image and develop it rather than flit from one to the other.
Good luck.

There Is No Death
 
Blow, blow, wintry diamonds, .....snowflakes fall, it's the wind that blows. 'wintry diamonds' isn't evocative. Diamonds are not wintry, so the two words don't create an image together, and the effort just comes as trying to hard to say 'snowflakes' in a poetic way.
cloak the earth in death, ...cliched image of snow as death.
in dust, we slumber through the night, 
and wait for summer’s breath. .... too many conflicting metaphors. 'Night' = death, so 'Death' = resurrection. But since you're waiting for 'summer's breath, you have 'Summer' = resurrection. So I'm not sure what a winter's day will be. Purgatorio?
 
While in repose my dearest, ...this address to a Beloved seems arbitrary - you do it at two places in the poem, but then forget about her in the rest
I shall fertilize the earth, ...'fertilise' is not a good choice of word, since it brings to mind other ways that you can possibly do it (I have a lurid image in my head of a man sitting on his haunches in the snow, thank you)
like burning wood sends smoke to sky, ....you're basically saying 'when I'm dead I'll decompose into smaller molecules just like wood burns and turns unto smaller molecules'. this is a trite and pointless observation that doesn't lead to any insight. If you meant to make a deeper point, it's not coming across.
and ashes to the hearth. ...see above

Cogitate my shadow, ...'Cogitate' is an ugly word in a poem as it has too many harsh sounds. 'Contemplate' sounds better.
in bedded rainbow flowers, ...inconsistent imagery. Think about a shadow in a flowerbed?  you mean, I suppose, the corpse under the flowerbed. 'Shadow' for corpse doesn't work here because it mixes up the metaphorical (shadow) with the literal (flower bed) and the end result is confusing.
that echo sunlit afternoons ....light doesn't echo. also, what is 'that' - the shadow, or the flowers?
and gloomy evening showers. ....showers don't echo
 
To Lila I surrender, ....I assume you mean the Hindu concept of Lila, and not the Australian aboriginal word for song ('Lilah' in one of the aboriginal languages, I recall seeing in a video). If so, then I'm not sure the mixing of  the Judaeo-Christian concept of death --> resurrection with the Hindu concept of death --> rebirth makes sense in the same poem.
an enchanted song and dance,
pulsing, throbbing, flowing, changing,
subjective lucid trance.
 
There is no death.
Like rolling waves,
that fear the dreaded shore, ....rolling waves don't fear no shore (edit: if they are already eternal at the core....unclear message)
our lives, evaporating dreams,
eternal at their core.
 
 
 

[Erthona]

This is written in irregular accentual verse. The first stanza is imitative of ballad meter, with the exception that it is not written in iambs. Note (accented syllables in bold):

Blow, blow, wintry diamonds,                (4)
cloak the earth in death,                         (3)
in dust, we slumber through the night, (4)
and wait for summer’s breath.                (3)

This would be a fairly regular pattern to follow with the xAxA rhyme scheme, however, the pattern does not hold, causing disruption in the reading as seen in the next two stanzas, although this continues throughout the poem.

While in repose my dearest,
I shall fertilize the earth,
like burning wood sends smoke to sky,
and ashes to the hearth.

Cogitate my shadow,
in bedded rainbow flowers,
that echo sunlit afternoons
and gloomy evening showers.

This is an interesting line, not withstanding that the word cogitate is completely out of place in this poem:

"Cogitate my shadow"

Does this mean for the speaker's "shadow" to "think", or for the reader to think about the speaker's "shadow"? Of course Blake used shadow often to describe the female emanation of one of the four Zoas, so the speaker could be speaking to his female counterpart. maybe whoever "Lila" is. In this case the most likely interpretation is the Hindu Lila, or loosely cosmos, everything that is, etc. It also finds resonance in the sense that Lila means "play":

"an enchanted song and dance,
pulsing, throbbing, flowing, changing"

I think a fairly apt description of Lila.

Leaving the speaker to be one of the three Guṇa, I would suggest probably "tamas" as the lines:

"Like rolling waves,
that fear the dreaded shore,
our lives, evaporating dreams"

seem the most indicative of tamas.

Of course the slender reed of lila is little indeed to base all of this conjecture on, but the poem would make sense within that context, where as outside of that context it makes much less sense. I think one would need to decide if it is or isn't before offering up much of a critique. Of course even if one decided on a Hindu interpretation, there are still problems, but it is beyond the scope of this forum for that kind of explication.

Best,

dale

[BW BRINE]

I was also a little thrown off by the change in accent through the verses (because it seemed so regular at first but then switches up). Apparently, as Erthona has so expertly already noted, it is in irregular accentual verse. I'm also not sure what ballad meter is.

I also wonder if this poem is about a flower, or a plant, or tree of some sort. I think it's well done in general, but I'm not sure if there's anything specific I'm supposed to get out of this.

I liked the first two verses:

Blow, blow, wintry diamonds,
cloak the earth in death,
in dust, we slumber through the night,
and wait for summer’s breath.

While in repose my dearest,
I shall fertilize the earth,
like burning wood sends smoke to sky,
and ashes to the hearth.

But, like Erthona, I wonder about "Cogitate" for the shadow. I wonder if it is just an error and mackzmike meant "Conjugate" so that the shadow is being blended into or connected to the rainbow flowers.

Overall, I think it has promise, but then again, I think a lot of things

-BW