MEALS

...and fields
of wan men
warmeal lie.
______________________________

Note: This line is a take-off on a line in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, called "Spring and Fall," (late 1800s) in which the poet is addressing a child named Margaret, who is moved by autumns devastation. The line is "Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie." The Hopkins poem is:
Spring and Fall
to a young child


MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, líke the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Áh! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.
_________

I switched the scene from leaves to bodies on a battlefield. (The little marks over syllables in Hopkins' poem are one of his many idiosyncracies. He marked some of the stressed syllables.)

Dean Blehert
Blogs:http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
WWW.BLEHERT.COM