new york city falling down
poetry by
cfanjul
16 September 2001
8 comments
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i saw an SUV hit a butterfly today.
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the SUV never even noticed,
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and the small pile of folded yellow spun off through the air as i passed.
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i saw a butterfly hit a skyscraper today.
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the skyscraper dissolved like a sand castle,
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and the butterfly metamorphosed into a ball of fire rising into the heavens.
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the butterfly knew its life was short,
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but why did it hate the skyscraper,
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sprice:
For one thing, it would change the referent of "we"... instead of asking rhetorically "but why did it hate", the stanza would read "we hate... but (we) wonder why" unless you stuck "I" in there, and that really throws it off. |
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cfanjul:
i've changed a few things around here, including dropping "our" hatred for the butterfly, and adding mention of suicide. i'm not sure if this unbalances the question of hate here... |
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whose only sin was being built,
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sprice:
The "it" is unspecific here. Though in context I'm figuring that it refers to the skyscraper, in the sentence, it grammatically refers to the butterfly: "why did it hate? Its only sin was...".
grammarninja: no apostrophe in "its" unless you mean "it is". Plain "its" is possessive, and is another English exception. |
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cfanjul:
done. i should proofread ;) thanks for the grammar-fu, tho. |
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and communing with the sky?
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lizzy:
This is a great line! |
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the trees don't know why.
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they don't even know it happened.
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sprice:
Chris-- this has an almost koan quality. Riddle-like (go grendel's workshop!), it ties a human act/object/behavior to a creature, and makes us reconsider our world by the natural one. Cool! If you're looking for revision ideas, I've got a few, but I didn't want to trounce on a cool poem if you were mainly sharing. write me. |
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sprice:
Chris-- Have you read Sarah Teasdale's poem "There Will Come Soft Rains"? This evokes much the same mood, esp. the last bit about the trees. I think you'll like it. |
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cfanjul:
scott - having read that poem, i realize i need to work on rhythm ;) and yah, the them of nature being seperate from the actions of man is interesting... buddhism would say that we're in it together, so i guess my take is that nature knows what's going on with us, knows that it is silliness, and it is us who ignores what the trees have to say ;) |
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Content © copyright 2001 by Chris Fanjul. All rights reserved.