Friday, August 5, 2011

Around the streets

                                                      Giorgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street

It seems to me a quagmire of intruders
as some intrusive dogs, silently
growling, hitching,
chopping the lanes, where there
is not a home, a wife, a child

A sunless hall at no shame, seizing
the old man’s polite honour
punctures the walls, laughs lusty


The stooped girl never becomes a woman.


I have a thick word in my mouth,
some rotten space.
It is the life in domestication
with no beginning and no figures
like a closed window grating light,
humiliating the saplings.

Grounding back and black.
Some slaved space.

9 comments:

Claudia said...

this is gorgeous monika - you captured the essence of the pic so well with your words...the menace.. the emptiness...the loneliness....great write!!

S. said...

I seriously loved the use of words :)

Scarlet said...

nice play of words, capturing the timelessness of the painting.

this line is interesting:
"Grounding back and black.Some slaved space."

Brian Miller said...

some foreboding words in here...the girl never becoming a woman...and that close...claudia used menacing, that is def the feel i get...very nice...

Anonymous said...

I have a thick word in my mouth,
some rotten space.
It is the life in domestication
with no beginning and no figures
like a closed window grating light,
humiliating the saplings.


Grounding back and black.
Some slaved space.

This is sheer brilliance! I have been to that pernicious land full of terrors and you describe it with piercing accuracy. Thank you.

hedgewitch said...

Really really good, Monika. I had a real sense of revulsion for this picture. Claudia picks up the menace in it her poem as well, but you give it a definite name and face.

Mark Kerstetter said...

You've created a potent feeling of melancholy, of a girl/woman trapped. Some phrases I like:

chopping the lanes

I have a thick word in my mouth, some rotten space.

That second one is a very sad image for me, since I think of the poet with an unknown word, or the seed of a word, in her mouth.

Thanks for sharing this.

Anonymous said...

I love the way you've interpreted this painting, it's like the shadows have taken on a life of their own. Wonderful write.

Dave King said...

I was reading your poem quite happily, but in no great excitement - to tell the truth - until I came to:-
The stooped girl never becomes a woman.

That and everything that followed excited wonderfully.