Inheritance

[Leanne]

We are the wastrel heirs of Knowledge.

Poor Sophia, she rode the currents of dark
and built her light, a monstrous mound from which
nothing could be removed.
Today, she lies dead at our feet,
her body whole –
only her heart is gone.

So we, her children’s children, plunge fingers
into the pile that has frightened us for so long;
it sticks to our hands, trying to seep through the skin.

As one we draw back. This is not meant
for hands as pure as ours.
Someone – tidemarked elbows showing
how deep he had thrust – mentions a market.
“People will pay for this,” he tells us,
“They will not know how little it is worth.”

We cannot shift it whole – how heavy it is! –
so I, the bravest fool, carry samples beneath my tongue.

To bright lights and tin noise, our
chosen home, we trip. God watches
from his xenon cross, blinking sleepily
as we play. The house does not know
the coin we carry; no credit is extended, no
back alley bargains struck. We turn

and he is there. Ragged beggar-man
with hungry eyes, “I
will dice for it,” he says. “I have the means.”
He shows us deeds to nations,
bank drafts and patent papers,
mining rights,
charts and charters and crocks full of gold.
Beneath my tongue, the taste grows bitter.

“No dice,” says Elbows (why
have I not seen him before?) “We trade.”
In slickest style, the bargaining begins
and when we wake, back in Her house, the pile is gone;
we are left with an old coat and papers
full of power. Here is the world, to rest in our palms;
Elbows wears a Gucci crown.

And I? I want nothing
but to taste that bitterness again.

[Todd]

O' Sophia, O' Wisdom...there's a lot here. I want at least an hour with this before I critique. I hope to get back to this one tommorow.

[billy]

i used to google to get a grip and also came up with sophia, greek for wisdom. and an Hellenistic philosophy. which means bugger all to me,
so instead of giving feedbac from the head, it has to be from the lump called heart;

We are the wastrel heirs of Knowledge.

Poor Sophia, she rode the currents of dark it does (the light)sound a lot like a metaphor for wisdom?
and built her light, a monstrous mound from which
nothing could be removed.
Today, she lies dead at our feet,
her body whole –
only her heart is gone.
i'm out on a limb here, it's a feeling of stasis the urge to learn has gone, instead we google

So we, her children’s children, plunge fingers
into the pile that has frightened us for so long;
it sticks to our hands, trying to seep through the skin.

As one we draw back. This is not meant
for hands as pure as ours.
Someone – tidemarked elbows showing
how deep he had thrust – mentions a market.
“People will pay for this,” he tells us,
“They will not know how little it is worth.”

We cannot shift it whole – how heavy it is! –
so I, the bravest fool, carry samples beneath my tongue.

To bright lights and tin noise, our
chosen home, we trip. God watches
from his xenon cross, blinking sleepily
as we play. The house does not know
the coin we carry; no credit is extended, no
back alley bargains struck. We turn

and he is there. Ragged beggar-man
with hungry eyes, “I
will dice for it,” he says. “I have the means.”
He shows us deeds to nations,
bank drafts and patent papers,
mining rights,
charts and charters and crocks full of gold.
Beneath my tongue, the taste grows bitter.

“No dice,” says Elbows (why
have I not seen him before?) “We trade.”
In slickest style, the bargaining begins
and when we wake, back in Her house, the pile is gone;
we are left with an old coat and papers
full of power. Here is the world, to rest in our palms;
Elbows wears a Gucci crown.

And I? I want nothing
but to taste that bitterness again.

seriously...i stopped, i got the neon lights but interpreting it is out of my depth.
i can say unequivocally that the poem has a presence about it. the writing is gargantuan and i can't fault any of it. i feel i know everything about it but can't put the fact into words. i get a great sense of death, which i'm sure i shouldn't. it's as if we've killed something (and not necessarily sophia/wisdom. more that we used wisdom to kill what we had/have.

i would love to have given a sensible piece of constructive feedback but i simply don't have the tools. it reads perfectly from top to toe and and it really does make sense, and i really do love it...i just don't know how or why

[Leanne]

Billy, I probably can't explain it any better than you can... I think you got the mourning the loss of desire to learn, or to seek out answers for ourselves instead of demanding them of another... it is a great departure in style for me, and I was kind of trying to build a bit of a contemporary Aesop thing... but I don't want to go too far into interpretation lest I overwrite what the poem says to people

Thanks for your heart/guts/whatever you use

[Leanne]

Todd, no rush, it's an old(ish) poem -- I've just never felt completely comfortable with it, since it's pretty much an experiment.

[billy]

Billy, I probably can't explain it any better than you can... I think you got the mourning the loss of desire to learn, or to seek out answers for ourselves instead of demanding them of another... it is a great departure in style for me, and I was kind of trying to build a bit of a contemporary Aesop thing... but I don't want to go too far into interpretation lest I overwrite what the poem says to people

Thanks for your heart/guts/whatever you use

if i got that then it's enough. i was going to say it's good to see you step outside form. but forgot in my ramblings

[Leanne]

I often step outside form :p Probably 90% of what I write is freeverse, but most of that's been hashed over since it's all that most forums will have anything to do with. This is an even further departure, wandering toward the prose poetry.

[Todd]

I just wrote a 45 minute critique hit the wrong button on my iPad and lost it all. I'll try again.

Blood pain and apocalyptic destruction

---

Leanne,

I'm sorry, I went line by line before but in the process of doing that I come to a more holistic conclusion as to what the poem means. Since I lost those comments I can't go back to the earlier frame of reference I had. So, I apologize if this is less helpful then the stream of consciousness line by line method.

So we have Wisdom moving through the currents of ignorance and building a wealth of knowledge and than dying and we are left with an inheritance that fascinates us but we hold in limited value. We consider it monstrous (love the word choice). We are left with knowledge that can not be unlearned and it's like Toffler's future shock information coming so fast that we are dulled by it. We have those that flirt with the pile but don't allow it to get beyond the surface. Though I don't see this as a religious poem per say I do see the people living in a naive pre-fall innocence of untested purity. Until one person is tide marked (again love that) up to the elbows. He sees a market (an application for the knowledge but sees no real value. He predicts the fall by the wonderful double use of the word pay, but knows that what he offers is of little value.

Then we are introduced to the speaker who places a piece of the pile inside their mouth. Innocence is gone now. On the day that you eat you will surely die. Is so get a Charon feel. The speaker brings death. And it is brought to a loud base world. I loved the bright lights and tin noise. Our chosen home is an indictment, and the trip is finely the fall which God watches--again fantastic break. This god though is sleepy and deistic with a crass glowing crass. One. Of my favorite lines was about we play. The house does not know. The break is solid and it gives the feeling that some card counting team has hit the casino. I also liked the We turn (break) and he is there. This is the Satan character offering the kingdoms of the world (but there's a price and the speaker can taste the bitterness of it).

The casino feel continues with no dice but we made an exchange for our current condition we did not lose our inheritance by chance. I love the addition of the gucci crown. It is a crass poor exchange. The ending delivers. Even elbows didn't carry the wisdom inside the speaker will live with the trade and be unsatisfied. The fall has occurred and so few even recognize what has been lost.

I may be way off Leanne, but I loved the poem and that's what I took from it. I hope some of these reflections will be helpful to you.

Best,

Todd

[Leanne]

Very helpful indeed, Todd, thank you. That's at least one aspect of what I was hoping readers would take from this, and in fact you've hit on several of the symbols so at least I know I wasn't being too obscure Some of your interpretations are different to mine, but of course no less valid, and they certainly fit the poem very well. I had forgotten Future Shock but now that you mention it, it's perfect -- so much change in so little time that we're bewildered by the gloss and glare, but our brains haven't yet realised that we're not taking everything in and we tend to think we know it all.