Wonderful. The concept of death dealt with in a way that I can appreciate...(I DO hope it's about death).

Hello Sophie -- intrigued by this but full of questions -- can't quite make the lines meet the (il)logioc in my head so I have some questions -- crickey, yes, here I go again!
Why are the sheep rotated by the clock? I love the image. Are we touching on human perspective given to nature, animal husbandry, farming, but in a field the sheep mull about according to their own knowledge of the landscape -- or is it counting sheep, the hypnogogic time on the cusp of sleep? Time folding like paper -- you can only fold a piece of paper eight times -- is it lots of paper and the one fold: why paper folding? Why does time fold like paper for the rule-less? Rules aren't necessarily written on paper...then I'm thinking of that Goon Show sketch where Eccles is sent off to find the time (oh there's a quest for anyone!) and he comes back a few hours later and says something like 'quarter-to-two' and they ask him how he knows and he says that when he met someone, he got them to write the time down on a piece of paper so he wouldn't forget.Origami? The ladies' laughter -- is that the White Light or is the scythe the white light? There's a full stop after 'scythe.'
If something evades can it erode? Isn't it too evasive to have physical consequences? is that why these two words are together? Again, 'expends and detracts' -- these glance off each other in my head, anyway -- whilst 'delete and destroys' click, although deletion leaves absence and destruction leaves debris. Or do they?
The night owl singing superfluously in the absence of death -- why is it the night owl doing something superfluously? Is every sound superfluous in the absence of death? No need to speak because there is no fear of expiration so we don't need to make ourselves heard because we are no longer finite -- but why the night owl? Auger of death? But the night owl won't know we've picked on him/her to be that auger....
And the 'Such freedom!' is divided from the final three lines by the exclamation mark -- the exclamation is kept for the phrase and not the whole sentence -- partial freedom?
Sorry for all the questions, utterly fascinated by the poem really, love the sound of this, but can't connect the words -- although I know this is me and not you and my way wibbly-wobbly way of running full-tilt into language and foraging about!

Thank you for all the explanation -- shame on me for asking for an explanation: yes, the Nietszche herd thing I get except sheep are a flock -- oh crickey I'm off again! I got the fab image of a clock shoving the sheep and the scything of the clock hands, yep indeedy. I guess the rules as geometric directions in space I find puzzling -- the folding of the paper eliminating travel between points but the space between if you take the fold as a fissure is still the same, you'd have to transfer the two points onto the one point -- yes, it's is me, isn't it? I really enjoy words that cancel each other out but am thrown into disarray when the words aren't opposites or their function mangles rather than clarifies where it was I was thinking! I have no problem thinking with loosened parameters -- but the specifics that come in, the night owl and the laughing ladies -- you have that Welsh legend about the woman created from flowers who, when she has proved herself unfaithful, is transformed into an owl -- but after cancellations and big sweeping things I am thrown by such darned specifics, although the images are gorgeous and so is the sound. But why is the owl singing superfluously? I have no problem with all time existing at once and contained in the moment and that it is merely a function of our physiology that levers it into sequential ticks. There's that lovely definition that our sense of time exists to prevent everything happening at once. We are sequential thinkers for the most part, attaching paradigms to our observations, when our observations are merely biological connections. Or something. I really do like this poem a huge amount. Life/death aren't necessarily contradictory, only our various interpretations of what they mean. Oh blimey! I always think life and death are sequential -- not opposities.

Sophie, I truly duly do enjoy your flights of fancy: not sure why owls would sing, though! One of my students used to describe the sound the owl makes as 'toots.' Your site looks wonderful as well.

Oh! The ladies laughter
lasts longer
than the sweeping of the scythe.


great lines


I love poems with 'Oh!' too I cant help using it in stuff, it's good to perform, hey I must hear you read this one.

Brilliant.

I really like this one.

Some fantastic imagery.

This poem gets better the more you read it. I especially liked the idea of folding time.

Phil

'Of course it's about death'. Mmmmh. How do you know? The Holy Grail of poetic wisdom. Who knows what death is? Is death sleep? Does it resemble sleep? Darkness? How do you personify death? Why would you even want to talk about death? Why not spend time talking about your birthday? Or even the time BEFORE you were born. It never interests me what happened in 1964. I wasn't there, just like I will not be there in 20**.
Death my arse. We are all, already dead.
Discuss.

Ignore him. He's from Barcelona.

Hi Sophie
We don't mind you advertising, the invoice is in the post
KP