View From The Northern Wall: The Spell Of Protection

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

The Spell Of Protection

I have spun the staff
faster than dream and stronger
than the hope of spring
and bloom in this place,
this one spot, holding my ring,
defying you all.
I see you all fade
from my memory like smoke,
leaving me standing
untouched by lost love,
by the entreaties you left
fading on the air.

May 30, 2011 9:57 AM

2 comments:

mittensMarch 9, 2016 at 3:08 PM
I love this, the ambiguity, the tone; and what a marvelous image, to go with it!
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christopherMarch 10, 2016 at 10:37 AM
Thank you for this.
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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.

The View From The Northern Wall

Some years ago my poetry took on a mythic flavor and I became a character in my own poems, a mage, "the man of the Northern Wall". This apellation is not completely fictional. My middle name is Noordwal, a Dutch term for north wall, though in current Dutch it mainly means north bank as in riverbank. I was told that an ancestor, a Portugese Jew escaping the Inquisition, settled in a small Dutch town and took this name from where he settled, near the north wall of the town. I have thought for a long time that -wal meant wall, think my mother told me that. A linguist might say that my usage is no longer common, is an older usage, but then the Inquisition happened in Portugal a few centuries ago, right around the time the Moors lost control of the Iberian Peninsula and the Jews lost the modest protection given them by Islam. Now I write as this mage, my poetry persona.

View From The Northern Wall

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

The Spell Of Protection

2 comments:

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