Your hands
They let go.
Once,
they caressed
and cradled
then,
they let go.
They moved
to gesture
the deepest love
fought,
to subside
the darkest fears
They bear lines
and marks
of all your years
yet,
stay empty
for more.
Once,
they held
and embraced
then,
they let go.
Unlike you
They let go.
Sweet... :)
ReplyDeleteO, I thought it was more sad than sweet...hehe. Thanks for dropping by tho.
Delete:-( :-(
DeleteNalh reuh lutuk.
ReplyDeleteMahse, "Unlike" hmaah 'So' (or something equivalent) telh zeuh ta la... Anyways, keep it up.
Thank you. Will try.
DeleteI think it's perfect the way it is! Very poignant.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, poetry can be so open-ended. I kind of read this as a tribute to an older figure who had nurtured and brought you up perhaps, then passed away leaving you with memories that, unlike the hands, don't ever let go. You ok with revealing the story behind the lines?
ReplyDeleteI believe that poetry or any art means or is about exactly what the reader says it is. That's why I always claim Neruda's 'Ode to broken things' as my poem. You can claim it as yours as well. And I love your analysis of this one. Thank you so much.
DeleteWell yes, I do know all that stuff. But regardless of my spin on it, I just wondered what inspired you because there always, always is something behind any piece of writing. If you absolutely don't want to talk about it, well, that's your prerogative, of course.
Delete:)..it's a combination of various events and the need to grow and move on...a kind of surrender you can say to things that you can't control and must accept. Hope I'm making sense.
DeleteHehe yes, though probably not in the way you think :) Regarding a reader's interpretation of a poem, several years ago we had Stephen Spender's "How strangely this sun reminds me of my love" in our poetry course and it perplexed me a great deal when I first had to teach it. A colleague who'd been teaching it the previous years told me Spender had actually been gay and that this poem was about a relationship with a male fellow poet, I forget his name. Obviously since it wasn't appropriate to teach the poem that way, he advised me to teach it as a relationship between a man and his friend. Which I did. So imagine my dismay when come exam time and the question from the poem was something like 'What memories does the lady have of her lover' or some such, plainly interpreting it as a heterosexual relationship between a man and a woman. I never asked the kids what they'd made of the question but in hindsight, I think a poem of such ambivalent nature (it's included in The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse, in fact) should never have made it to an undergrad syllabus in the first place.
Deleteyou sure you wanna stand empty for more...???
ReplyDeleteI think I can understand how you are reading this Mike. Yes, that would be quite miserable.
Deletebut its beautiful in very way....dont let my comment spoil that..its always good to read your work
DeleteThank you Mike
Deletehe nau hi chu a thiam reuh ania! Somehow despite the caressing, cradling and dispelling of fears, the last couple of lines make me think of too tightly-bound apron strings heh.
ReplyDeleteHahaha...tightly-bound apron strings huh? Ok. Dangdai thei. Like. Thank you :)
DeleteI love it! You use words so beautifully Sanga - I like the note of optimism in the concluding lines - hands do let go but someone doesn't let go lai tak hi! LIKE LIKE LIKE ani top :)
ReplyDeleteThank you thank you thank you ani top :)
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