Source
r/OCPoetry•
Sora1499

Requiem for the Living

Feedback Received!

Do not pity the dead;
Pity the living.
Pity the hollows who stumble in dreariness,
Pity the indigent, who crawl to trickling rivers
Only to find them swallowed by the fat mouth of the Earth.
Pity the weak, who suffer and die;
Pity the broken, who suffer and wait to die;
Pity the lost, who spend their nights
Ambling among the starry hills
As their names fade like the mist coalesces into dew.
Pity the lonely, who have but the darkness for company.
Pity the living, who can do nothing but die.

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Alternative titles: "Requiem for the Dead", "Requiem"

Posted Sep 11, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC · edited

166
brenden_norwood•

I really liked this one! :)

Your use of repetition gave the piece power and momentum, to the climax of one of the best, most intricate similes I have ever come across:

"As their names fade like the mist coalesces into dew.

We all have this innate fear of being forgotten. Absolute oblivion is one of the most scary things that we face (and choose to ignore.) The idea of names that are like mist, to be clumped together and then later evaporated is terrifying. Great use of simile there, I think it's the most captivating part of the piece! :)

Pity the indigent, who crawl to trickling rivers

Only to find them swallowed by the fat mouth of the Earth.

This, I think, is a metaphor for greed, and those who suffer on the back end of it. I dig it.

If I were to change anything, it would be some of the punctuation, specifically in lines 6 and 7. I'm not sure why there are semicolons there. While I like the lines for the parallelism, I think commas would be fine.

Also, that last line hits like a truck.

Great job Sora! :D

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Sora1499OP•

Thanks man :)

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MrsElonMusk•

I don't even know how to explain this. This is my favourite out of all I've read on this sub so far!

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GrizzlyRob97•

Hi. I would have to agree with the previous comment in it's admiration for the power within the poem. The first and last lines together are as stunning as two lines could be. The lines in between, with their repetition and the imagery, are just as powerful.

Aside from that killer last line, 'Pity the lost, who spend their nights/Ambling among the starry hills/As their names fade like the mist coalesces into dew.' were my personal favorites.

It's hard to offer anything to improve on a poem of this quality, let alone something to build on. It's like an English teacher is showing me something you wrote two centuries ago. Maybe a more conformed, noticeable structure would help the read? I don't know.

I hope you keep writing

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Sora1499OP•

Thanks man! That's a huge compliment :)

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karmel_a•

I love this as a dark response to the Beatitudes-- the human perversion of divine intentions...

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