The Supplicants

[milo]

The Supplicants

The Arabs say that madmen
have seen the face of God;
in India the sacred cow
has rule of every sod.

There is a bizarre bigotry here which makes me think your narrator may have recently joined the KKK. "The Arabs say . . ." The Arabs inhabit the most religiously diverse area of the planet and rarely agree on anything religious wise so I am surprised to hear them all say this . .

Midst pomp the Roman churchmen
enact their mythic feast;
while ragged Masai herdsmen
see their brother in a beast.

your meter changes in the last line. Poetically, the rhetoric is dull. We want fresh original verse in poetry. plus madmen - churchmen-herdsmen = snooooze

In Israel the faithful
beat their breasts against a wall;
and fundamental zealots
preach their doctrine of the Fall.

again, the rhetoric is as dull as a bran muffin. The meter now changes every other line. "Fundamental zealots" is at least consistent with the ignorant bigotry of your narrator.

Oh, there is much religion
and talk of higher things:
of cosmic laws and deities;
the joy repentance brings.

"oh, there is much religion"? - is a way to say almost nothing as unpoetically as possible. "higher things" - is way to be as general as possible. the meter continues to be all over the place

But who will feed the children?
And who will stop the hurt
of that old woman kneeling by
a body in the dirt?

I don't understand why your angry biggot of a narrator is suddenly worried about these women and children. I also don't know where these women and children just came from and why they are in such a state of distress

And who will end injustice,
and who will banish war?
And who will offer solace to
the outcast and the poor?

And who will make the blind to see,
and who will walk the lame?
And who will bring fulfillment of
the promise in His name?

Oh, You, who made the universe -
behold us in our pain!
Do not forsake Your handiwork:
come back to us again.

It goes on in the tiredest most droll sense possible, bringing no fresh revelation, no epitome, no closure, no fresh original poetic language just plattitudes in my opinion.

I wish I had something positive to add here. I did think the line "who will walk the lame" was funny, but only in the darkest sense of humour and there are many who wouldn't find it funny.

I don't think you should take this personally but I think this particular poem isn't really that good and I wouldn't even know where to begin to tell you how to start fixing it.

milo

Hello, Milo.

Thank you for your detailed critique.

I never take personally any comment, adverse or otherwise, on anything I have written. My only real concern is when readers assume that the attitudes of a fictional narrator reflect the personal attitudes of the writer.

As to the quality of what I wrote, I can only roughly quote Chaucer (and before him, Hippocrates): The life so short, the art so long to learn.

Regards,

Pilgrim.

Because I am never the narrator in anything I write, I always assume no one else is. You can imagine my surprise and dismay upon discussing a poem about a young girl whose grandmother just died . . .

As for the quality - yah, I have written much worse, it is what it is, hopefully we learn and move on.