100 Day Project – Days 5 and 6

DAY 5 (May 15th, 2017)

John Gould Fletcher
John Gould Fletcher

Chinese Poet Among Barbarians

The rain drives, drives endlessly,
Heavy threads of rain;
The wind beats at the shutters,
The surf drums on the shore;
Drunken telegraph poles lean sideways;
Dank summer cottages gloom hopelessly;
Bleak factory-chimneys are etched on the filmy distance,
Tepid with rain.
It seems I have lived for a hundred years
Among these things;
And it is useless for me now to make complaint against them.
For I know I shall never escape from this dull barbarian country,
Where there is none now left to lift a cool jade winecup,
Or share with me a single human thought.

My Commentary

Hyperborean born
a million miles from the sun
among the torpid, unblinking sons
of mortar, bricks, and pyrite thrones.

DAY 6 (May 16th, 2017)

John Gould Fletcher
John Gould Fletcher

Tide of Storms

Allegro con fuoco

Crooked, crawling tide with long wet fingers
Clutching at the gritty beach in the roar and spurt of spray,
Tide of gales, drunken tide, lava-burst of breakers,
Black ships plunge upon you from sea to sea away.

Shattering tide, tide of winds, tide of the long still winter,
What matter though ships fail, men sink, there vanish glory?
War-clouds shall hurl their stinging sleet upon our last adventure,
Night-winds shall brokenly whisper our bitter, tragic story.

My Commentary

I sink into the slumbering, loving clutches of the briny deep,
having spent my patrimony on the broken crags
of this awful, delightful, bequeathed world.
How will my accounts be settled or will they be settled at all?
The market, too, will be washed away with the tide.


The 100 Day Project

The 100 Day Project

The 100 Day Project is a creativity excavation. It’s about unearthing dormant or unrealized creativity by committing to a daily practice everyday for 100 days.
Creativity is a skill. The more we practice, the more skilled we become. Practice takes time. Practice takes commitment. Practice is a radical act in this speeded up world. Through practice, we develop a creative habit. Through habit, we reconnect with and know ourselves again as a creative being.

I started this 100 Day Project on May 11th. My project is to read a poem, and write at least one first-draft stanza inspired by that poem. I’ll post the results at www.bradseverance.com/category/100-day-project/

Enjoy!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *