Time
I submit to you my thesis
with you, basically, its subject
because you have made so far
what I am now.
Ι came from scant resources
I wasn't sent abroad for higher
ignorance. I stayed here paying rent
to a low ceiling inner
knowledge of my homeland.
I followed the cost effective
method of an absent teacher
and any absence in general,
which is a more extensive education method.
I struggled, impossible to enter
the difficult chapter
of 'absent meaning'.
What I had found to have
was absent to others.
And although I wondered rigorously,
wonder itself marked me with zero.
I corrected the mark wondering anew
about the absent logic of your method
time
to bring changes and by wonder
take back completely erasing
the previous gentle form
that things had
before they became educated.
And now even
with the method of an absent maturing
I shrink get startled wonder
how even all of these absences have changed
they were not as frequent
how death has changed
it was not as frequent
when love passionately introduced it to me.
---------------------------------------------
Personal notes:
This poem was published as part of the collection 'Greenhouse grass' (2005).
In this poem, Dimoula muses about the passing of time, love and mortality.
The last line of the poem is crucial to interpreting what has preceded. Dimoula suggests time takes its toll on love, as it does in life.
For most of the poem, she personifies time and talks directly to it, acknowledging the changes and loses the passing of time brings in our lives and our loves.
In the first stanza, Dimoula suggests the passing of time, growing up, and our mortality shape love and who we are. She presents life and love as forms of education and time as the ultimate teacher.
Dimoula continues to make parallels between time and education throughout the rest of the poem.
In the second to fourth stanzas, she talks about being loyal to a country, a house, or a lover despite an absence of reciprocity. Absence is a key theme here: it is repeated several times, suggesting it is a major experience in life and love.
The last three lines present the full implications of this experience: change, loss, and death are intrinsic parts of life and love.
I submit to you my thesis
with you, basically, its subject
because you have made so far
what I am now.
Ι came from scant resources
I wasn't sent abroad for higher
ignorance. I stayed here paying rent
to a low ceiling inner
knowledge of my homeland.
I followed the cost effective
method of an absent teacher
and any absence in general,
which is a more extensive education method.
I struggled, impossible to enter
the difficult chapter
of 'absent meaning'.
What I had found to have
was absent to others.
And although I wondered rigorously,
wonder itself marked me with zero.
I corrected the mark wondering anew
about the absent logic of your method
time
to bring changes and by wonder
take back completely erasing
the previous gentle form
that things had
before they became educated.
And now even
with the method of an absent maturing
I shrink get startled wonder
how even all of these absences have changed
they were not as frequent
how death has changed
it was not as frequent
when love passionately introduced it to me.
---------------------------------------------
Personal notes:
This poem was published as part of the collection 'Greenhouse grass' (2005).
In this poem, Dimoula muses about the passing of time, love and mortality.
The last line of the poem is crucial to interpreting what has preceded. Dimoula suggests time takes its toll on love, as it does in life.
For most of the poem, she personifies time and talks directly to it, acknowledging the changes and loses the passing of time brings in our lives and our loves.
In the first stanza, Dimoula suggests the passing of time, growing up, and our mortality shape love and who we are. She presents life and love as forms of education and time as the ultimate teacher.
Dimoula continues to make parallels between time and education throughout the rest of the poem.
In the second to fourth stanzas, she talks about being loyal to a country, a house, or a lover despite an absence of reciprocity. Absence is a key theme here: it is repeated several times, suggesting it is a major experience in life and love.
The last three lines present the full implications of this experience: change, loss, and death are intrinsic parts of life and love.
Thankyou, George.
ReplyDeleteI found this poem very bitter. In particular, stanzas two, three and four. I feel that the voice is full of cynicism and irony in those stanzas. It's such a contrast to the previous poem that you posted that it's kind of a shock!
But I like it. It's very powerful. Like a solid punch to the stomach of a happy passer-by.
J