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Poet 3
Posted: 28 February 2004
Word Count: 95
Summary: there is a poet 1 & 2....
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Poet 3
A little toe note
a small written history
a thread bare chain of office
a drawing room for corpses
a clue left, the evidence quiet.
A name, a sex, a place,
a day, a month, a year.
Scribbled water proof labels
covered in blue biro eulogies,
death's time-tabled reference.
Later in the sweet spoon of earth
angels will snip with silver scissors
mans crudely cuffed indifference.
A little toe note
a small written history
a thread bare chain of office
a drawing room for corpses
a case rested, a finger printed.
John G.Hall(C)2004
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Comments by other Members
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 olebut at 14:24 on 28 February 2004
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John
profound, very moving and so sadly true all thats left to identify us when we go and a system totally devoid of race, rank wealth and status.
take care
david
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roovacrag at 20:28 on 28 February 2004
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I agree with David on this.
Enjoyed every word, can't find a fault in any of it.PERFIC.
Well done love.
xxalice
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miffle at 11:47 on 29 February 2004
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John, challenging poem. Reminded me of 'About his Person' (Armitage?) - someone picking through the pockets of a dead man, the paraphenalia of life piecing together a sparse skeletal image of who he was. All seeming, too shabby, too small tokens, for the infinity that is a man, a woman...
First verse sense of things shrinking, diminishing, death replacing life. Agatha Christie. Poirot on the case. Super sleuth. Identity a puzzle to solve essentially always and forever The Mystery, Death the last door. Identity cannot be pinned down...even though you may try with statistics and words.
Second verse - Again idea to me of vital statistics. My mum has a sampler of my full name and birthdate and birth-weight on the wall - does that fix me in this world? No, identity is endlessly mututating, kaleidoscopic in my mind's eye...Reminds me of sthg DH Lawrence said re. the novel (I think?) re. not 'pinning things down'...
Verse three - 'waterproof' suggesting care. Poet's care to preserve his waterproof labels - Poet's are 'caring to preserve' all the time...'A thing of beauty is a joy forever'...the poem...Poet's aware that a poem can immortalise, linking with immortality in their words. 'blue biro eulogies' liked the contrast here very much - collision of something cheap, replaceable, expendable with something beautiful with the power to immortalise.
Verse four - 'sweet spoon of Earth' loved this image. Romantic sensibility seeping through - someone 'half in love with easeful Death'. Unusual re-working of a Romantic image; reminding me too of the John Donne tomb poem, also Larkin's Arundel Tomb...'snip with silver scissors' love the snip-snip but gentle sound. Image of man's indifference to God, the Heaven's bounty, angels tied back in a hair clasp AND of course it will be long hair, again a Romantic vision, growth in Death, life persisting. Quite a 'magical real' image. My favourite verse in the poem. Words to keep in a locket.
Last lines: enjoyed the repetition which gave poem cyclical structure echoing life (well, my perception of). Felt the judge's hammer bang down in 'case rested', also and more gentle, the coffin being lowered into the earth. 'a finger printed' - so is the fingerprint what we resort to now for identity seeing as it eludes us all? Sounds ironic to me - i.e. no way! And what was his crime? Modern inflection here re. police, courts...
Dense poem, nikki ;-)
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John G.Hall 
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