Once we were soldiers
in combat. You killed me then.
I will forgive you
in some longer life.
Contraction
1 week ago
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The View From The Northern Wall
Some years ago my poetry took on a mythic flavor and I became a character in my own poems, a mage, "the man of the Northern Wall". This apellation is not completely fictional. My middle name is Noordwal, a Dutch term for north wall, though in current Dutch it mainly means north bank as in riverbank. I was told that an ancestor, a Portugese Jew escaping the Inquisition, settled in a small Dutch town and took this name from where he settled, near the north wall of the town. I have thought for a long time that -wal meant wall, think my mother told me that. A linguist might say that my usage is no longer common, is an older usage, but then the Inquisition happened in Portugal a few centuries ago, right around the time the Moors lost control of the Iberian Peninsula and the Jews lost the modest protection given them by Islam. Now I write as this mage, my poetry persona.
About Me
- christopher
- Oregon City, Oregon
- Mechanical designer for industry, now retired, once a Bay Area Hippie, went undercover in 1972, I've been writing poetry for years. Contact: 3topper45@gmail.com
Over The Wall
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chopping water and hauling wood9 months ago
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O7 years ago
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Bye for now7 years ago
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Your narcissistic flower8 years ago
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Brilliantly simple and straightforward. There's quite a bit lurking under the surface, too.
ReplyDeleteHi Joseph. This is the part I like best of a poem I posted some time ago, slightly modified to be the sole subject here. You are right about stuff lurking under the surface, like a whole reincarnation thing.
ReplyDeleteMany people hold the view that we incarnate with a group, over and over and ultimately hold every possible relational position with at least one other person. This means not only husband and wife or brother and brother, etc but also predator and prey, and soldier and soldier and whatever.
My mother and I shared (she is no longer on the planet in that role) the opinion that only reincarnation allows for Divine Justice to work out on the planet. As such reincarnation is a theological best guess as to what's really going on and that's how I hold that opinion.
I will happily change my opinion as soon as someone actually demonstrates another scenario. Until then, I will take reincarnation seriously but somewhat tentatively.
Christopher, would you send me a copy of the whole poem?
ReplyDeleteThe whole poem had a bunch of stuff in it not really related, but no, what I did was scan through hard copy and remember this passage when I came across it. That gave me the title and I could locate it. But I just did the same thing and couldn't find the poem. I don't remember what I called it. You are welcome to come look for it yourself... there's only 1500 poems to look through... :D
ReplyDeleteOr of course you can look online through the archives... the poem is certainly there and not too far back as I recall.
ReplyDelete