This is the poem I’ve learned this week. A shorty I know but no less pleasurable or lovely in the learning.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Have enjoyed the spaciousness and ease of knowing it is only eight lines. All pressure gone, it will be relatively simple compared to my first 24 line poem I assume as I started out - and it was.
Again I’ve come to know it in a way that is perhaps not possible with reading, certainly in a way I’ve not experienced with reading. Reciting forces me to be precise and to repeat often, over and over again and in the repeating an imprinting takes place. Maybe like writing on the bones as Steve referred to in one of his posts.
Definitely etched into me in a way that no amount of reading seems to do. There is a moment when it is ‘in’. Where it seems to chunk down to a place inside me and I sense it is there to stay.
Time will tell but I certainly hope it is permanent.I notice in particular how important all the small words are. The joining words and the beginning words…is it ‘of blue and dim’ or ‘the blue and dim’. These details matter greatly.
Onto choosing the next verse…..
