Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

Black Swan on the Perth river.

The quietly glittering suburbs,
run snug in a choired chain,
their mingled meandering lights
follow the curve of the river in vain

hope for a Yearning mouth,
not visible beyond
the fist of clumped spires,
resembling a pocket full
of New York slung
south westward,
on cold dry promises
of gold.

Dark and quiet
star scraped streets
that echo of no-one
in the shivering empty
bars.
Did my heart know of you
then?
Was it there?
Unconscious knowledge,
tremulous gnosis
of your Swan like neck

Style / type: 
Free verse
Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Review Request (Direction): 
How was my language use?
How does this theme appeal to you?
Editing stage: 

Comments

Being a girl who lives by the Swan, I have to love this one Chris xxx

Is that long-necked beauty me perhaps? Lol

One thing - do you really need the 'in vain' at the end of the first stanza?
it seemed out of place to me
lol - I'm probably missing a major component of your message....

Love judy
xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

If anyone on this forum fits that description then I'm certain that it is written for you! In another lifetime perhaps ;) - Didn't realise you were a Perth girl, there you go, small world. I was over there a few years ago, working for a loathsome mining company (won't be doing that again) and the view from the hotel was compelling at night, near the river from a balcony. I jotted down the bones of a poem then, but shoved them in a drawer and didn't do anything with it, then i saw some black swans on the River Derwent down here in Tassie, and it reminded me, so I resurrected it. the Swan was a bit of a liberty/invention - not sure you even have them? It was an image I used to reflect a yearning for someone now in my past, so there you go.
The 'vain' is a kind of enjambment to the next line, and literally rhyming and vainly following on from line 2 - i suppose i could have dropped it, but then it lead to hope, and hence to the black Swan. Like the river, it's beauty without end, only the ocean and then returning ultimately to the rivers source.

Thanks and take care :)
Chris.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

West Aussie's badge and bird are the black swan
the Swan River was named for the black swan...
lol - we sure do have black swans on our Swan :-)
xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

The black swan is also on the west aust coat of arms
xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

Being an itinerant pommy, and largely ignorant of WA's history - I did not know that! (just face palmed) I will endeavour to make amends or at least read up a little on that. I did a lot of reading about early Hobart, Tasmania and the Port Jackson connection, the Rum Corps etc. - but have to confess my ignorance of the story of Perth/WA, apart from some reading up on the history of the early mining exploration. I didn't get to stay long, saw a bit of Fremantle, plus the city at night, but then had to rush back to Brisbane and on to Mackay at the time.

I offer my sincere apologies for my blunder :)

Take care, Chris.

(PS will see black swans everywhere now!)

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

having loved William of the Rose
and clunking though Milton and Lord Jim
Atwood....
I surely appreciate your crafting!

barren..noble and regal...
cool but the hope of warmth
love the movement of flow
in this one!

thank U!
Denmarks bard
was always into the textual
and the beauty of symetry
in the force of his tensions
of tradgedy and lessons..

I second that list, it's funny i only recently read Oryx and Crake, if i've got the right Atwood. It does kind of have a melancholy bent, but then, sometimes, I find a lot of beauty in that balance of beauty, tragedy, loneliness even - sometimes has a clear sighted honesty about it, which isn't necessarily about suffering, but more about listening to the still, the darkness - speaking of Darkness Visible - that brings me to Milton that you mention, also a fan - it's a huge task isn't it? To wade into that works and come through the sticky river, a little unhinged, but a little the wiser. My brother in UK sent me miniature bound with brass clasps Paradise Lost printed in the 1790's - for Christmas, which as an absolute little treasure, i darent open the bloody thing, so small and fragile, containing such a large and voluminous world..
There are some works like that, which i know i'll never fully comprehend, but keep revisiting, like Ulysses - Joyce's encylopedia of a day with a heartbeat.

Glad you enjoyed.

2 really cool things/resources I've used:
Cambridge Christs college, interactive map of Paradise lost:

http://darknessvisible.christs.cam.ac.uk/

And one to listen to at night with the headphones, ulysses - played out and brought to life by brilliant irish voice actors from RTE (Ireland's ABC) free for streaming:

https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook

And let's not get started on Blake!

take care my Canadian compañero, glad to hear from you

Chris.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

amazing and thank U for the links!
library was always having these big sales
from fifties sixties...classics turfed out
for the more mind fodder of the nineties
there was soo much!....and records too
I was this close to buying a record in
near mint condition
Dylan Thomas! reading his christmas
stories...I eventually read up on him
I lost all the books from my apartment
being too cold to heat.....I starved froze
that year..but the books saved me..
there is something about existing in
books and the harshest of times that
is electric......I like what U say about
not suffering....per say...but something
else....
the intangible for us all...
I read much Stienbeck then too...
Emily Carr's writing too...

thank U

(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.