01-07-2016, 12:43 AM
Sincere thanks to all who have commented. I've tried to apply all the good advice in Edit 1 (below and prepended at top of the original post).
- Title change, recommended by a clear majority; similarly LL7 and 13 altered to eliminate their antique/exclamatory aspects.
- The "knot" pun (uninteded, by the way) eliminated in S1, and much else shifted around.
- Lines @Emz and @will liked are preserved, with slight changes in punctuation to avoid multi-comma halting where appropriate.
@Erthona - Interesting thesis on genesis of the installation. You may well be right; herons, egrets, and the odd kingfisher on that creek suggest presence of fish, though I've never spotted any in it (or hobos along it). Thanks for your rewrite, also: if recast as free verse, no stanza breaks would be required and it could well resemble what you suggest.
Question: Is the final couplet/stanza needed? I left it, for now, but only because I hate leaving the reader to think the preceding stanza was to be taken seriously.
Edit 1
Hanged Bottle
Seen from the bank above a rushing creek
this vision, serendipitous, appeared.
A headless reed arched stronger than the rest;
from its tip, tangled, naturally tied,
a bottle dangled by some random chance:
hanged, lynched by misadventure, left for dead.
The vision shifts: this bottle strung as bait
from some sly, tempting demon’s fishing-pole,
the sort of devil Bosch might have conceived,
stork-beaked and funnel-hatted - with his catch,
damned drunkards, writhing naked in his creel.
But that is not a faith revered today.
Instead we worship nature’s uncaused grace:
the random reed’s support, the vital lace
of duckweed tied, no doubt, in such a knot
as men could not invent, like DNA -
self-organizing majesty, no God
or human thought involved, all-natural.
So there it stands, symbolic installation,
no sign of man (except for that damned bottle).
- Title change, recommended by a clear majority; similarly LL7 and 13 altered to eliminate their antique/exclamatory aspects.
- The "knot" pun (uninteded, by the way) eliminated in S1, and much else shifted around.
- Lines @Emz and @will liked are preserved, with slight changes in punctuation to avoid multi-comma halting where appropriate.
@Erthona - Interesting thesis on genesis of the installation. You may well be right; herons, egrets, and the odd kingfisher on that creek suggest presence of fish, though I've never spotted any in it (or hobos along it). Thanks for your rewrite, also: if recast as free verse, no stanza breaks would be required and it could well resemble what you suggest.
Question: Is the final couplet/stanza needed? I left it, for now, but only because I hate leaving the reader to think the preceding stanza was to be taken seriously.
Edit 1
Hanged Bottle
Seen from the bank above a rushing creek
this vision, serendipitous, appeared.
A headless reed arched stronger than the rest;
from its tip, tangled, naturally tied,
a bottle dangled by some random chance:
hanged, lynched by misadventure, left for dead.
The vision shifts: this bottle strung as bait
from some sly, tempting demon’s fishing-pole,
the sort of devil Bosch might have conceived,
stork-beaked and funnel-hatted - with his catch,
damned drunkards, writhing naked in his creel.
But that is not a faith revered today.
Instead we worship nature’s uncaused grace:
the random reed’s support, the vital lace
of duckweed tied, no doubt, in such a knot
as men could not invent, like DNA -
self-organizing majesty, no God
or human thought involved, all-natural.
So there it stands, symbolic installation,
no sign of man (except for that damned bottle).
Non-practicing atheist