Blind men in the park - Shakespeare's Monkeys

blind men in the park

blind men in the park

they come in the afternoon,
predicting each step.

one has a companion.
his sighted commentary
on events of the day.

on benches facing the river
they talk things over
until darkness comes.

no one stays in the park
after the light is gone.
not even a blind man.

so they leave.
one on the arm of his friend,
the others with familiars
of their own.

crossing in front of me
stepping
delicately
into the street,
they slip into the night
and are gone.

near the Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind
the Northside, Pittsburgh, PA

U668857 -
I like the style of writing. It's economic and concise, using salient ingredients
to convey image and meaning; and it is lucid which allows the poem to communicate vividly.
The darkness of the blind plays with that wider light and dark of daylight and night; and the
piece hints at other aspects of darkness. It presents a paradox where the darkness of the blind
is associated with light. There's a humanity at the heart of this which appeals. Rgds.,Alan.

Alcuin of York -

Truthfully, I did not care for this at first. The writing is concise, but the exposition seemed to accomplish little. I did not feel at the end that I knew / understood / experienced any more than when I started. Further, there is nothing in the words to take my heart away - to affect me emotionally in a direct, verbal way. The sounds of the words do little.

But viewed as a vignette of life, this is quite effective. When I look at this less as an experience of poetry and more as a description of life-experience, I began to appreciate it. Remembering some of your other poems and how they struck me, I realize you do a lot of "vignetting" and very little "versifying", a big difference between us. From now on, in looking over your writing, I'll keep that in mind.

You get a lot of imagery out of a few words, and your words are well chosen, such as "predicting" in L2. Also, it was wise to put "crossing in front of me" in the last strophe. That made it real and personal; and experience instead of a disembodied fact. One little nit: You end the 1st lines of S2 & S5 with periods. You might do better with commas there. Otherwise, very nice!

Alcuin