On hearing of the death of an elderly neighbour

[Ros]

On hearing of the death of an elderly neighbour


last night, while you were stalled by lorries
jack-knifed on the motorway. A stutter
of a pause for you, a half-hour watching
kestrels hang above the verge then fall
towards the end of something hesitating
in the grass. Here, a deeper break, a severing
of threads that tied him to the decades, reeling in
the shapes that formed the shadows of his room.
Now you're home, welcomed with a cup of tea;
and she's home too, his wife, alone –
back from the hospital, opening the front door
onto silence, dropping the crumpled packet
of pyjamas on the floor. Switching on the lights
in darkened rooms. Throwing wide the windows.

.

[Antcliff]

Ros,

You have a run on from the title AND what seems to be a non-sentence. I like run on starts from titles and am not one of those who automatically object to non-sentences. But I think you follow that with another non-sentence? And then another....and I then felt a little lost. But then the ending is so clear in comparison..with the last two non-sentences being so much easier to read in the context (because the full stops may as well be commas).

Now you're home, welcomed with a cup of tea;
and she's home too, his wife, alone –
back from the hospital, opening the front door
onto silence, dropping the crumpled packet
of pyjamas on the floor. Switching on the lights
in darkened rooms. Throwing wide the windows.

This difference made me go back up to the start and wonder why I had been a little lost.

last night, while you were stalled by lorries
jack-knifed on the motorway. A stutter
of a pause for you, a half-hour watching
kestrels hang above the verge then fall
towards the end of something hesitating
in the grass. Here, a deeper break, a severing
of threads that tied him to the decades, reeling in
the shapes that formed the shadows of his room.


It is the "here" I think that throws me. Where is it? In the grass? In the car? (behind lorries)? But we are talking of the neighbour...in his room? Hmm.

Seth

In passing.. apropos of nothing...this poem reminded me of an incident. The wife of my grandfather's brother died in hospital in 1951. But I had a note from my grandmother's sister saying that the brother had also died the same day. I was puzzled. Were they both in an accident? But it wasn't so. Puzzling. Only by chance did I get to know the truth. She died, he came home, sat by his window and prompty died of a heart attack.

[Ros]

Hi Seth, thanks for taking a look. The beginning is a bit convoluted. The here is supposed to be here, as in back home with the narrator and neighbours and hospital - contrasting with events on the motorway. All my poems are tying themselves in knots at the moment. Must be something to do with the weather.

Ros

[Antcliff]

I think I was thrown because the poem takes us, via the watching , kestrel, falling...to the grass. And so it is natural to read the "here" as referring to the spot where the poem has been taking us? Just a thought.

Must be something to do with the weather.

I know the feeling...ha!


Seth

[Ros]

Any excuse! Must try harder.

Ros

[twoleftfeet]

Hi Seth, thanks for taking a look. The beginning is a bit convoluted. The here is supposed to be here, as in back home with the narrator and neighbours and hospital - contrasting with events on the motorway.
Ros

That's what I assumed. Maybe "back here" would make it clearer?

I'm not clear who is doing the "severing" - N or the widow (or maybe even the dead man)?

I like the unexpected (in my case) ending.

Geoff

[Ros]

Thanks, Geoff - back here is a good idea. The severing is the man being parted from life.

I need to write something straightforward...

Ros

[Jackie]

Ros, I do so love this.

I am not quite sure of your intention regarding the You persona. You chide him as if he'd complained of the inconvenience on the motorway. Diminishing his role this way confuses me because this doesn't seem like a frivilous poem, and the parallel between the coincident events in the first octave--the kestrels killing, and the severing of the threads--seem the stuff of myth. It's as if the You witnessed the Death Agent carrying out the neighbour's death, mystically.

How stunning that the wife came home to find silence and was eager to open everything up now that the "shapes that formed the shadows of his room" had been reeled in in her absence.

Hmm, a fault somewhere. Perhaps a more powerful word than break in the 6th line?

Jackie