05-09-2015, 12:23 AM
(05-06-2015, 07:08 AM)tectak Wrote: Marie died a week ago. How do you read "Marie"? "Ma-ree" or "Ma-ri-yey"? I think three syllables would work better for this (Maria...).
I can't let go. I can't let go.
I loved her when hair turned grey.
Like yesterday. Like yesterday.
I touched her hand and stroked her brow.
A memory now. A memory now.
We said goodbye, we cried for you.
Friends loved you, too, they loved you, too. "FRIENDS LOVED you, too" is a mouthful compared to the other lines (a MEM'ry now, like YESterday, i CAN'T let go) Maybe remove these two lines, too? Everything else involves only one mourner -- it'll definitely strengthen the lonely feeling of the mourner.
Alone now with your photograph. Maybe a comma, instead?
I hear you laugh. I hear you laugh.
To sleep I hold your pillow tight. Maybe a comma, instead?
Alone at night. Alone at night.
In chill dawn air I make believe. Maybe a colon, instead?
I hear you breathe. I hear you breathe.
I doze beside you in the shade .
A dream we made. A dream we made. Maybe commas between "dream" and "we"?
This ending feels superfluous, like an attempt to infuse some deeper insight into a poem that seemed to focus more on the emotions of the speaker than meat. I'd just end it with a full circle, with the first two lines capping the whole thing, fulfilling how the speaker's grief, in this poem, started out in Marie's old age, then ended with the dawn of a new day -- besides, the following is basically a different and longer stating of those two lines.
The repetition is pretty neat, though. Drives in the obsession of the speaker for Marie real hard. A bit comic, yes, but only in the sense of being a bit too, er, sentimental or obsessive(kinda like one of them old tragedy ballads or a villanelle or something). Thanks for the read!
Marie died a week ago
but still I see her hair of grey,
and touch her hand and stroke her brow.
Her photograph is on the bed
propped on her pillow by my head.
I cried last night for me, not her.
In every moment she is there.
In dreams you sigh, "Remember me".
I do, I do, my Hail Marie.
tectak 2015