Contra Heterodoxy

[milo]

Contra Heterodoxy


If in the present turn I played a role
as tender as the daughter who foresaw
disaster when she gently asked her sisters
not to make light of filial obligation
only to be rebuffed, I would feel more
compassion for your cause, I would shed tears
for how the storm yet scars your senseless face
by whipping water droplets into darts,
but in this reenactment I was cast
as one of all the nameless background figures
suffering as you suffer, if not more,
our tokens of this kingdom as it prospered
poorer by far than yours, our taste of order
only as mother nature righting wrongs.

Hello

The thought here is very interesting if I am getting it correctly - we have a modern reenactment of Lear (whether this is a true theatrical reenactment or just metaphorical isn't ever resolved but I prefer to think of it in the latter) and our narrator is not one of the starring roles but rather one of the forgotten cast - the housemaid, the farmer, the cook, etc.  and their cry is that while the spotlight may favor sympathy for poor Lear and his troubles he cannot for not only is his lot bad now, he never enjoyed the bounty of the good times.

As a metaphor and a statement, it is very interesting, particularly for those so inclined to be interested in such things.  Where it perhaps suffers is in the actual mechanics - the first 5 lines are referring to a character referring to an event in a hypothetical.  It's a lot of "friend of a friend of a cousin of a neighbor" and it loses a lot of interest before  it really gains traction.  In addition, it relies so heavily on abstraction to convey the thought over imagery - role, obligation, disaster, compassion, cause, suffering, kingdom and order - that it loses a lot of the bite it might otherwise have.  'Mother Nature' might be a bit cliche.

It does a good job of adopting the affected speech of Shakespeare without falling into the trap of affecting language.  I wondered at times whether this was intended as a blank verse sonnet and - sure enough - it would fit the rules - kind of like a Tennessee Whiskey that is also a Bourbon kind of thing. The last line attempts to resolve everything with a "lesson" or "moral equivalence" or whatever but the poem is actually stronger without it - left unresolved and hanging much like it currently is.

Thanks for posting

I actually continued sitting with the thought for a bit and came up with an interpretation that I am almost 100% certain is not your intent but that I found interesting as a mirror in the more contemporary:  To me - when I read it - I thought of it as an indictment of modern society where all the spotlights are pointed on President Trump or Elon Musk or Taylor Swift and how we have built the greatest society in history but for most participating it really isn't that great so when (I took mother nature as climate change here) climate change comes and knocks us all down together, I won't feel any extra sympathy for the "great people" just because they have fallen so much firther to be equal

Now I am almost certain this was not your itent but I think it would be interesting because the speaker's complaint becomes more subtle - "They are the people whose suffering gets recorded" as a celebrity's hardship becomes a cultural event while a thousand ordinary people's hardship becomes a statistic.