MY LOVE FOR POETRY

Hey, there! Sorry for not having uploaded any stuff lately, but I had no internet connection for days due to a technical problem. Ok, then. There's a particular story going on my mind for a couple of days and I'd really like to share it with you. I've been a great fan of poetry since I was in Junior High School. Those days, my two favourite poets were Yeats and Tennyson, that I'd got to read after listening Loreena McKennitt's songs, which were poems of theirs.

Soon afterwards, I fell in love with Poe. The debut album of The Alan Parson Project, called Tales of Mystery and Imagination, is wholly inspired by Poe's stories and poetry. So, every song in this album is named after a Poe's story or poem. And there's this particular song, called The Fall of the House of Usher which gives me shivers everytime I listen to it. It's a 16-minute length piece, which starts with a man narrating one of Poe's very famous quote phrase: “Shadows of Shadows passing... It is now 1831... and as always, I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations to which end, music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, color becomes pallour, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless.” The rest of the song is a mix of symphonic music and progressive rock. In particular, the music reminds me of Disney's Fantasia.

Thus, this album led me to Poe's magical world and my best friend bought me his complete works as a birthday present. I used to carry the book everywhere, particularly at school. And this made me see the world with different eyes, in a way. It made me stop being so childish and realise that there's a lot of trouble in this planet. That our worst nightmares can become reality and there's only OURSELVES to blame for. Furthermore, my favourite Literature teacher and I used to spend hours and hours talking about Poe's works and it was such a pleasure for me, because most of my friends seemed like they actually hated this kind of Poetry. They thought that Poe is really extravagant or something similar.

However, another Poet had the greatest impact on me. The following year and actually the last year of school our English teacher showed us a wonderful film, the famous Dead Poet's Society (starring Robin Williams). In this film, the teacher quotes much from a poet, called Walt Whitman. I don't know why, but I had a very wide smile on my face, everytime I heard such a quote. I would agree with that to the full and I felt I'd really want to have such a teacher at school. I instantly checked out Whitman's poetry and this is when the great BOOM happened. I'd first read "O Me, O Life" and of course the 52-sectioned poem "Song of Myself" When I read the latter, I started thinking deeper about life. One of the things I questioned was "Who are you?". Of course, this question has nothing to do with your identity by name, but....how well you know yourself. Did I really know myself?

Apart from myself, I started questioning about others. Could I understand their feelings or their pains? Or did I look into things only through my own point of view? For years and years I used to feel that nobody loves me and nobody can understand how I feel. But this time, I wondered whether I, personally. could understand others. Maybe it was me the one who was selfish and not others. And it was after I'd read Whitman, when I became really interested in writing a story about the lives of homeless people, living under a bridge, instead of focusing only on crazy dreamers who lead their lives in solitude, writing death-like verses. The most important think, though, was that I started to question a lot of philosophical matters like: "Is there really a God?" or "What's the point of anyone's life?". (I actually started losing faith after reading Bakunin's God and the State).

On the other hand, I never stopped reading poetry about lonely dark artists etc. I went to University to study Literature and Linguistics. It was actually during the 2nd semester, where I had a course on Romantic poetry. Then I read a few poems of that era and I fell in love. At the meantime, I was listening to Loreena McKennitt's "Parallel Dreams" which was a very Romanticism-inspired album. During that time, I used to leave home at 6:30 to go to the University, which was 2 hours away from home, and it was still dark outside. I was listening to a song by Loreena McKennitt called "Annachie Gordon" in the bus, while reading Poe or Stephen King sometimes. 

After doing this for couple of weeks, soon I started to have my legendary "Ocean Dreams" at night. I was dreaming of me being alone in the dead of the night in a sea, experiencing the stillness of water. My eternal home <3 But one morning I got up and smiling, I wrote a poem, which is one of my favourites of mine ones, that is absolutely a Romantic poem. I named it Lamentation for a Dead Child and though it's dark, I was really content when I wrote it.

Well, ok! I still love dark lyrics and artists in solitude who think nobody loves them. However, after having read a few books, I have started really to appreciate life and myself, as well. And of course this time I can tell people "I understand you".

Anyway, I'll provide you with the lyrics of my poem:


A little child sitting alone

in the middle of the woods

His cheeks were red, his eyes so sad

as he turns to look at me

“Where is my innocence”, he said

“will it ever come back again?”

“Don’t worry”, I said “You’re full of love

And your heart will always stay pure”



He was looking towards the Sea

“I want to be there” he said

“I want to see all the world

and find my innocence

And in the moonlight and the waves

to sing about love

In distant lands and long islands

to leave there my soul”



So he took a little boat

and started paddling away

His heart was dancing, he was smiling wide

as he was watching the blue Sea

The shore was lost. now only the waves

and dolphins around his boat

And somewhere there he would see

the islands of his soul



“Here we are”, he cried. “Let’s go down.

The island is forth.

Here will I find my love.

Forever will I stay here.

I’ll taste the wine of my fair girl

and the salt from the Sea.

And then I will die full of joy

when I’ll have lived my dream”



A dead child with tears in his eyes

Loved to live in the Sea

A dead child would have longed to die

Bring the innocence to him



He started walking to the mountains

He never saw his home

His love that he was searching of

Would only heal his soul

A wanderer was what he became

He was blinded by lust

He passed by valleys and streams

Until the night came down



He tied a rope to the boat

and set sail again away

“But where’s my love, my innocence?”, he said

And looked again to the Sea

But the answer again came from the stars

He saw a light

Dead is your love, dead is your innocence

Vanity is your search



Devastated by the stars’ words

he didn’t know what to say

Deep in his thoughts, blinded by love

he tied the boat’s rope around him

He looked to the Sea and nothing more

then there he saw his love

And in tears he fell to the Sea

He vanished from this world



A dead child with tears in his eyes

Loved to live in the Sea

A dead child would have longed to live

Bring the innocence to him     

15/5/2017

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