Dear friends, we are still living in uncertain times, which is why I’ve been working on these verses for a few days now, and I think today is the right day to publish them.

I have chosen iambic pentameter, which is the dominant metre in English poetry (from Shakespeare to Milton and Frost). I have structured the verses to echo the classical cadence of English literature, but with a message that questions whether, in attempting to ‘preserve’ memory on paper, we are not in fact imprisoning it.

The Keeper’s Ink (A Song for the Silent Inkwell)

To you who carve the ghost of ancient days
In syllables of frost and silver light,
Who walk the labyrinth of borrowed praise
To keep the flickering human spark in sight;
You hold the world within a narrow pen,
And map the heart as if it were a land,
Defining love for all the sons of men
With logic that the tides won't understand.

alt

The Saxon tongue is broad, a heavy loom
That weaves the shroud of every fallen grace;
You build a monument in every room,
But fear the silence of a nameless face.
Is peace a word you’ve captured in a book?
A butterfly pinned down to show its wing?
You claim the soul with every line you took,
And kill the very song you wish to sing.

Yet, let the ink turn back to water now,
And let the memory breathe without a name;
For wisdom does not wear a laurel brow,
Nor does the spirit hunger for its fame.
In quietness, the broken world is whole,
Beyond the reach of English, or of art.
True peace is not a record of the soul,
But unwritten music in the beating heart.

I would like to invite my poet friend Hive account@silher to read his contribution, if time allows. Also thanks to Hive account@moeknows for visiting my post.