Fingers Probe*

[mfwilkie]

Fingers Probe

I.

"I lit candles at all the altars;
let go of August’s lowest murmur,
and now an empty seashell hums
and the sea is laughing.

It is not just you I lost
but the world.

II.

Again today I turn a page of the sea.

The water is golden under the bridges;
its current bringing along the seasons.
The past goes on falling.

What must I do to single out myself?

Shatter the night and rip up the day
to overwhelm this silence
between the life I dreamed
and the changing dream I live.?

Only this?


III


Night drains from the moon
and I hear the enormous roar of the surf,
the essential thread on which my existence
is strung, and all the stolen years without you
drift by, sea-woven with desires pure and bitter.
I touch this emptiness once and will not sleep again,
forever."






* A Cento drawn from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry
edited by J.D. McClatchy

[Jonathan Morey Weiss-Namaste47]

Nice flow Maggie. What is the source of the cento?

[Jo Lynn Ehnes]

I love that Maggie. I love doing centos but I think so few truly appreciate them the way they should, they see it as stealing and not any work, damn they are hard. LOL I love this one and yes who is the source.

I wrote one last week using Mike's works. I should send it to you, I know you'd like it. He has such a wonderful voice, much like this one above.

[Ron Wallace (Scotshawk)]

Excellent!!! I too wonder at the source. There were times it struck a familiar chord, but I never could place it. Ron

[mfwilkie]

Damn, I forgot to copy the title. Sorry guys.

I used The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry edited by J.D. McClatchy

Mags

[Jo Lynn Ehnes]

I will take your advice, Mags, will try to get to find one this weekend, or perhaps I should peruse one of the old EP anthologies and see what my eyes can catch in those.

[Tina (Firefly)]

Forgive me, Magpie, but is this your cento or one from the book you mention? I didnt quite understand. No matter, it's one of the lovliest pieces I've read in a very long time. III in particular, just made me melt into it's beauty: Night drains from the moon.....

[mfwilkie]

It's my cento, Tina; its lines and phrases come from seperate works in the anthology.

I think I left a link to the cento's early history in Jo Lynn's draft drawn from Michael's work.

Maggie