XPost: alt.arts.poetry.comments, alt.language.poetry.pure-silk, alt.writing   
   XPost: us.arts.poetry   
   From: rre@mla001.demon.co.uk   
      
   In message , Henrietta K   
   Thomas  writes   
   >   
   >Absolutely true.  But there are other people besides the punishers and   
   >their victims, and it is those other people who decide whether the   
   >'punishment' was justified.  And in many cases, it is not.   
   >   
   >>That's why, when he put Sodom's image on his poem as an excuse to punishment,   
   >>I challenged him to write with such inspiration about Salem: which would   
   imply   
   >>"we are going to   
   >>punish you as a witch, even knowing well that it is absurd and you didn't   
   have   
   >>done anything wrong."   
   >   
   >Except that Rob wasn't trying to 'punish' you.  He was actually trying   
   >to communicate, but you didn't realize that.  Bear in mind also that Rob   
   >lives in the United Kingdom, not the United States, and probably doesn't   
   >know much, if anything, about the Salem witch trials.   
   >   
   Actually, I'm reasonably conversant with the Salem Trials but that's no   
   particular Reason for me to want to write about them.  In any case, I   
   feel that Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" has cornered the market in   
   using Salem as a metaphor for modern political/social persecution.   
      
   As for writing about Sodom, well, I thought the "wood and bamboo and   
   cherry blossom" clues in the poem pointed reasonably elsewhere.  If I   
   was writing about Sodom, I would have pointed differently.   
      
   Salt   
      
   I am muddled with wine and loss   
   and too old for this but the girls   
   know all the ways of the Cities.   
   They move on me like wise wet eels   
   in the darkness, make me forget age   
   and tiredness, again and again.   
      
   This is a night of urgent fingers,   
   disembodied mouths and blind entwining,   
   without consciousness or conscience.   
   We are like desert beasts, moaning   
   in this cave of heat and blackness.   
   We dig for every drop of moisture.   
      
   But when I taste the salted beads   
   that drip from throat and breast and thigh,   
   I see, once more, the blinding bitter   
   picture of my wife, their mother:   
   a spike, a sentinel as pale as crystal,   
   on the dark ash of the ruined plain.   
      
   Rob   
      
      
   --   
   Rob Evans   
   Poetry is the needle that pricks your finger.   
   Everything else is the haystack.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)