The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

cradle

folded in damp cloth,
in the crook of river's elbow
the found cry, its shrill

vowel pulls apart reeds,
peels history from death

baby curl your own
lone need, your prayer
and birth a nation
as each baby does.

Hi Dave,

I can’t image what triggered this write, but I love it.

The Moses parallels are wonderful.  I am wondering how you would feel about papyrus rather than damp cloth in L.1.  Is that too heavy handed of a reference?  Also, the subject of S.1 is the “cry”.  As written, the cry is “folded in damp cloth”.  I suggest you consider “from folds in damp cloth”.  This notes the origin of the cry and not its current location.  Just a thought.

Also, S.34 L.3 – birth a nation.  I love this, except for the fact I can’t ignore the Birth of a Nation reference, no matter how much I try.  See  Birth of a Nation  Maybe there isn’t the effect for UK readers.

I took the liberty of thesaurusing “nation” and got these: tribe, clan, empire, society, people, lineage, blood clan, race, dynasty. 

I don’t know if any of these do it for you, but I thought I’d flag the matter.

Cheers.

T
 

Firstly, thank you Dave, for being so stalwart and stoic with keeping the pages moving on the site while the rest of us old lags are off on sabbaticals of sorts.

In the poem I always had an immediate Moses moment. The piece seems to speak about potentialities. Like T's tree piece, this seems like an unconscious search for solutions to the nosedive of life in general. Civilization as we know it seems to have acquired an expiry date.