Poem: Gift

[mayamaia]

I think I need to polish this. Possibly alter it enough to take advantage of the bilingual bonus in that fact that the German word Gift means poison.

*******
You were a gift to me.
I know.
And have known, but not as well.

But tonight I am staring at another gift
The words that tell me why
what I know
I know.

I met you and felt fear.
I noticed you and felt fear.
I liked you and felt pain.
And then I loved you

And everything that came before
Was meaningless and nothing
A sweetly silly story I could tell
And all the masque that came before
Was part of the joy I'd found

I loved you and felt fear.
I talked with you and felt fear.
I adored you and felt pain
As if the earth had shaken
And my body had opened up
And the skies that ached to open
Could not rain for the fire that engulfed them

I walked in pain that bred panic
I walked and worked and cultivated calm
I silenced my sorrows for survival's sake
I shut down.

And then, my darling, you were a gift.
You were a gift to me.

Because one day the pain changed.
One day the sharpness was not of new damage
But the cruel ache of regrowth
And I turned my face to the sun
And felt the warmth of its golden rain.

And you were a gift to me.

And everything that came before
Was meaningless and nothing.
A softly scented secret I could share
And all the pain that came before
Is part of the joy I found.

You sent me on the stony path
you sent me through a wilderness
You sent me through the dens of beasts and brigands

You sent me to the humbler gate
I could enter only for having first passed
through hell.

And then, oh, how I loved you
For you were a gift to me.

Comments

[tristissima.livejournal.com]

It seems a little distant, or maybe flat. It's like you're describing a bonfire from far enough away that you need a jacket. You reference difficult things -- fear, pain, hell -- but I don't connect to the difficulty there. Normally, I'd suggest description, but you can use language and languageplay (like the Gift pun) to maybe do the same thing and that could be fascinating!

[mayamaia.livejournal.com]

...I think that distance was what was on my mind when writing it, more than the bonfire itself. So the question becomes whether I want to change the focus of the poem or the focus of the writer...

I've written so much about the bonfire, after all. But it's very hard to write about coming to terms with things, letting the bonfire die down, letting kindness and calm return, without the poem turning into something like a photograph washed out by the light from the fire in the distance.

It is so much easier to write about passion than it is to write about calm.