Poetry Forum

These things are chance,
coinciding
with no cause;

as chance as new
paint on elbows
as you pass a door;

or the Flannan
lighthouse-men
rolled from shore.

Good stuff Ant!
I love this kind of myth

Like Gibson summed up;

We seemed to stand for an endless while, though still no word was said,
three men alive on Flannan Isle, who thought on three men dead.

The only nit for me was the simile use in S2 could be a bit closer to the subject.

Cheers,

Wally

Thanks Wally for calling by.

Glad you noted reference...and indeed quoting the Gibson (which I quite like).

Good question you raise on second stanza. To use a Scottish expression, I have havered over that myself. I could make it more sea-ish, but I wonder whether that would be a slight distraction since "these things" are not merely sea related in nature.

Hope to see you again down river.

Ant

Hi Ant,

I like the feel of this and the brevity. Short ones are like a good vista on a tree-lined road.

The line breaks are odd to my ear, I'd change most of them. It very well could be a culture thing.


But, I enjoyed thinking of the Flann men.
Thanks,

Suzanne

Well, not just sea related or even Scottish, Ant. It just seems to me that paint on you elbows (which is probably caused by inattention more than chance) is hardly in the same league as three men vanishing without trace from a remote island. And was it pure chance the incident happened? Perhaps pure chance it happened to the men on that particular shift? A closer comparison would be getting struck by lightening on the way to church.

Just waffling Mate

Suzanne...still on the road.

Hmm. May be right on linebeaks.

The Flann-men thank you...although nobody has seen them in a while.
Ant

Hi Wally,
True, not in same league of importance, but, I was supposing, as chance as.
So your question is good one. Thank you..a second good one from you.

Pure chance, I don't know.
Depends on what really happened. The standard theory is that they were fixing something the following day that had been damaged in a storm..and then a roller hit them. If so it might be closer to the brushing of paint in passing...concentrating on a task and not noticing. But I take your point. Interesting thank you...you may have tempted me to write more on such things. So there may be another version of this or more on theme down river. In fact there definitely will be as I think now.
Ant

"as chance as new
paint on elbows"

that line break, iRKs big time.

Spoils a good simple poem.

Hi
Thanks for calling by Camus.
Righto...so two votes against that break...which makes me think it may need to go.

Cheers,
Ant

camus wrote:Spoils a good simple poem.

And it is a good simple poem. I liked it.

Cheers

David

Ant this is a fair poem, and brief, but while I can see the coincidence in careless elbows and fresh paint, I am missing the coincidence in the last stanza. And, I am not quite seeing how either painted elbows or lost men can have no cause? I'd rather that S1 have a better explanation of "these things" and that lines 2 and 3 be left behind.

Hi Sandbanx..thanks for reading and your helpful comments.

"these things" are many..deliberately not specific..including the ills/tragedies of life that are without single/any purpose or even much of unified explanation...from the most trivial (paint) to the Flannan incident. Also perhaps certain wider cosmological things. I don't think I can do much to change that opening without changing the poem. Hmm.

True, the last stanza refers to the event but does not do much to explain the coincidence. But I picked "rolled" because a "roller" is a freak wave that caught them, by coincidence, when they were repairing storm damage (or so the standard theory goes). Still, that might be too minimal. I will ponder, thank you.

Ant
There is an opera by Peter Maxwell Davies on incident, although I have never seen a performance. The tale is quite well known in westish Scotland.