Sleeping Tomb

[RiverNotch]

I'm already dead,
I'm just trying to rise now.
The wind surrounds me
and howls for my surrender.
I succumbed countless moons ago,
The world too bleak, my soul too meek.

Landless peasants lived a life
I couldn't live
Their souls intact, their fight not crushed.
I mourn the lifeless body,
staggered across the seaside cliffs.
Laid upon the jagged rocks
like a sleeping tomb.

-But I still breathe.
the wind,
it swirls and
it howls
for my surrender.
Every move I make-
makes me colder,
but I still breathe.

Hello Gestalt, half of verse 3 is almost a mirror image of verse 1, exept in verse 3 you are alive, and I cannot (for the life of me) see how you got to that state when in verse 1 you are "dead".

The state of death is symbolic of course, its alluding to being dead while alive, whether it be spiritually, emotionally, psychologically or all of the above.

We get that the death is symbolic, but the last stanza feels symbolic too (and at the same level as the first), hence the assumed contradiction.

You repeat " but still I breathe" twice in V3 which jars me, and I cannot connect the dots as to why the narrator "still breathes".

The narrator still breathes because they still have an ounce of fight left, he/she may have succumbed to life's cruelties, but there is still a glimmer of hope, as he/she lays "lifeless". I repeat the wind in the third versus because it is ever present, threatening the protagonist's will to continue on.

The repetition is, I think, appropriate for the purpose of the last stanza, but again, how could the narrator, who is "dead", be able to "still breathe" at all? If the psyche is dead, it implies that the psyche cannot flat out breathe; if it breathes, then that is after its death, and not a continuation of its state of death. I suggest that instead of saying "but I still breathe", you switch to a proper resurrection, or heck, you reject the idea of the psyche being completely dead and state that it is merely near-death.

what does "the wind surrounds me and howls for my surrender" mean?

The wind can be many things, but mostly someone's inner demons and doubts, etc.

The dead have already surrendered to death, so the wind wouldn't surround you and howl at your surrender when you're dead. But I get your interpretation of the wind, and I feel that it isn't misplaced, so I don't really think the line needs any changing.

How can a "lifeless body", be "staggered" across the seaside cliffs?.

Imagine a lifeless body upon jagged rocks, it wouldn't be neatly laid out due to the topography.

I believe you've a mistaken understanding of the general meaning of the word stagger: most people would interpret your statement as your dead body being moved by something into a state of near falling, as that's the general meaning of the word stagger. You've to change the wording to something better.

I always think of a "tomb" as being "enclosed".

[b]The use of tomb here is being used as a symbol more so than a structure.

[i]Tombs are abodes for deathly sleep, so stating that the tomb is "sleeping" is somewhat redundant: a more notable effect (but one that is different from your poem's point) is stating that the tomb is awake and full of life. However, the redundancy isn't always caught-upon, so I think you needn't change your wording there.

The way this section is worded likens the "lifeless body" to the "sleeping tomb".

Likening the "lifeless body" to the "sleeping tomb" feels like a very powerful comparison, as it feels like the "lifeless" correlates to the "sleeping", and the "body" correlates to the "tomb": that is, that the dead speaker feels entombed not only death but in life; in death he is entombed in death, in life he is entombed into his corporeal body. If that is the section's purpose, I suggest you just clarify that with a rewording

Thank you for posting.
JG

Thanks for taking the time to read!

The general purpose of the poem, though, feels unaccomplished, as in trying to breathe a spark of hope into the speaker's deathly state, he goes by simple contradiction instead of a more appropriate build up: in showing how he "still breathes", he contradicts his earlier statement that he's "already dead", a form kin to a deus ex machina. You have to remove that stinging contradiction that the speaker is both dead and still breathing (as discussed earlier on), then you have to make a really strong build up to the last bit, by I guess either making his world darker or implying early on sparks of light around his aching world.