quiet please, human being in progress

[Joyful Noise]

quiet please, human being in progress

Must we fear Silence?

The raven will shriek either way
and that tree will still fall 
and we, well,
We will be tossed into Oblivion
O, where does Sound go when it
leaps from our arms 
to chase down its ancestors’ freedom:
existence for its own sake and
for God’s pleasure
His sweet celestial symphony

Is Sound our Creator?
That Elysian detonation that set us
all in motion
Spreading out and away,
sentenced to an eternity 
of filling the gaps with
noise
instead of
Sound

[Caravano]

The metaphor/imagery needs a lot of tightening I am having trouble following.
"Must we fear silence?"
Maybe give an instance where you/the character fears silence. Not everyone fears silence. I for instance dig it. If you fear silence, maybe there's a reason, maybe there's some personal truth to give to the page. That's what I would love to hear. 
"The raven will shriek either way" So the raven will shriek w/ or w/o silence?
and that tree will still fall 
and we, well,
We will be tossed into Oblivion"

If you're going to hang out in lofty metaphor make it into really solid imagery.
If the reader was looking at a raven in a tree what would they see: is it's black marbles of eyes staring you down? Is it preening it's feathers? What kind of tree? Is it deciduous, is it winter and it has no leaves? Build the metaphor in the images and details. 
What kind of oblivion, there are many? Maybe look at a picture of oblivion and write about what you see, hear, smell. Here's one from Poussin https://images.app.goo.gl/oZXGZYDGDz4dNpaT8
Or look at your door these days...

---

Oooh yeah, good luck. If you like writing poetry, never stop. I do like the sound idea, it could work out well with enough work.

[busker]

Echoing the above crit, I'd say that there are too many metaphors as loose ends in this poem. The raven, the tree (Yggdrasil imagery, made banal by HBO), then suddenly something like a cat or monkey leaping away from your arms. Then that monkey chasing the zoomorphised 'freedom' of our ancestors, and suddenly back to Silence and Sound.
The Oblivion with a capital O is trying hard to be profound.
And God's celestial symphony...are we to suspend our disbelief in the Pythagorean music of the spheres? It doesn't look like it's intended as an allusion to a historical belief. If that was the intent, it's not come out well. I would furthermore eschew all gratuitous use of 'sweet' and 'celestial' in a modern screenplay.

The parts after that are a death spiral. There was no 'sound' in the Big Bang - there was no medium for longitudinal vibrations to propagate in. And what does Elysium have to do with all this?
There may be an intended reference to 'Om' and the Hindu belief in the sound at the beginning of creation, but the allusion is weak, and doesn't link up strongly enough with the rest of the poem.

[Caravano]

Didn't strike me as Eastern, but I am totally steeling the idea of om and a silent beginning. ha

[Valerie Please]

Oh I wasn’t getting that same reference from the tree line as the others! I thought of the “if a tree falls in the forest” thought experiment. And with the raven, I was thinking of “quoth the raven.”

I really liked this poem, overall, just because I found the concept of it appealing and I found the personification of sound to be kind of playful. 

 “Existence for its own sake and for God’s pleasure.” I think we could all do much worse than that.

So I took the entire poem to be a play around this idea. Also, I guess the raven shrieking and the tree falling are both emblematic of death. It’s not easy to write a beautiful, playful death poem.

Ok yes, in the last line, I did think of “om,” too, but it’s not too directly stated as to be heavy-handed. It’s a nice contrast to the “leaps from our arms” so rather than being a force that we control, sound is propelling us as it goes. And this line reminds me of the line in your hummingbird poem...doesn’t the bird fly in between gaps in that one as well? At any rate, I think it’s a nice culmination into the final lines. 

I enjoyed it, thanks for posting.

quiet please, human being in progress

Must we fear Silence?

The raven will shriek either way
and that tree will still fall 
and we, well,
We will be tossed into Oblivion
O, where does Sound go when it
leaps from our arms 
to chase down its ancestors’ freedom:
existence for its own sake and
for God’s pleasure
His sweet celestial symphony

Is Sound our Creator?
That Elysian detonation that set us
all in motion
Spreading out and away,
sentenced to an eternity 
of filling the gaps with
noise
instead of
Sound

[Joyful Noise]

You were spot on with the tree and raven references, Valerie. Glad you connected with them both and found them to be lighthearted nods at death.

---

Caravano
I am so appreciative that you would include a reference for oblivion—what an astounding work. I will keep in mind adding a more detailed, personal touch. I actually do not happen to fear silence, but I was using it more as a parallel to death in this particular poem, which I (and many others) do fear. 

---

Echoing the above crit, I'd say that there are too many metaphors as loose ends in this poem. The raven, the tree (Yggdrasil imagery, made banal by HBO), then suddenly something like a cat or monkey leaping away from your arms. Then that monkey chasing the zoomorphised 'freedom' of our ancestors, and suddenly back to Silence and Sound.
The Oblivion with a capital O is trying hard to be profound.
And God's celestial symphony...are we to suspend our disbelief in the Pythagorean music of the spheres? It doesn't look like it's intended as an allusion to a historical belief. If that was the intent, it's not come out well. I would furthermore eschew all gratuitous use of 'sweet' and 'celestial' in a modern screenplay.

The parts after that are a death spiral. There was no 'sound' in the Big Bang - there was no medium for longitudinal vibrations to propagate in. And what does Elysium have to do with all this?
There may be an intended reference to 'Om' and the Hindu belief in the sound at the beginning of creation, but the allusion is weak, and doesn't link up strongly enough with the rest of the poem.

I would argue that your interpretations were much more grounded in history and exact metaphors than I intended the poem to be and have. However, you definitely got me there with the Big Bang. Exactly what I was going for, and I quite honestly did not even think about how it would not have made a sound. Hmm…bummer. The image was quite sound (no pun intended) in my head. Thank you for your always-insightful feedback, busker.