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Beneath the Blooms
I search the hills for blooms to smell.
The dew drops kiss my naked feet
to wish me and my journey well
but fade before the rising heat.
Oh flowers, flowers everywhere
I dance between the red and white.
Oh flowers, flowers without care
I hide with you from sunlight’s sight.
And there I smell your wild perfume
beneath your boughs of drifting shade
Between your leaves I hear your tune
that sweetly sings of all things made.
But there I choke upon your scent
and by the blooms my life is spent.
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The Sins of the Father
_My friend you walk with weight upon your back
_But you do not complain or tell me so
_Why must you hold this weight and walk this track?
_Your feet are black, your head is red and low.
Perhaps you hold the burden that your father left behind.
_Were his mistakes your own? His debts your fee?
_I think my friend, you’d live a better life
_If you could wipe your blooded eyes and see
_That there is something better than this strife.
Better than the burden that your father left behind.
_Oh why should some be free, when you are trapped
_To walk the path that dead men paved for you.
_Be free poor soul, a better road was mapped
_For you to walk and find a life renewed.
And leave behind the burden that your father left behind.
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Christian Muller is a high school teacher in South Africa. He is currently working on his MA in English Literature at the University of Pretoria.
Beautiful and thoughtful poems both, Christian. “The Sins of the Father,” as it twice addresses a friend whom the speaker considers a “poor soul” trapped by a weighty burden, perhaps considers the advised escape in freedom necessary to engage in authentic friendship. But since the burden is described as “strife” and “mistakes,” the father’s “sins” are seen as a moral evil precluding a good life in general. The desired freedom is greater than prideful adolescent self-assertion; the friend’s advice is truly friendly. The play on words in the last line (“leave behind” to contrast with the repeated “left behind”) is impressive.
“Delightful” is the word for “Beneath the Blooms.” You had me thinking of Chaucer in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women, where the red-and-white daisies cover the ground on May mornings. Your blooms, affecting the senses of smell, touch, sight, and hearing overcome the very life of the speaker in the final lines. They perhaps warn against too much wild freedom–such that your two poems form a subtle pair contrasting misuses of life and time. Whether or not you intend so, your works attract the reader with their distinct beauties of diction and music.
Thank you for a wonderfully detailed and thoughtful response!
We probably all have ‘baggage’ we carry, true and imaginary, from our fathers, and more specifically, Christian, perhaps you’re referring to the apartheid era also. Whatever the case, we can all relate to the feeling one way or another. I particularly enjoyed the way you portrayed the metaphor as a journey that is an impossible unburdening, by extension ready to be passed on.
Beneath the Blooms is a melancholy though fulfilling piece that I’ll probably have a crack at again to further fathom the ending. Another ‘journey’ piece, I was intrigued by Margaret’s take, since for me your piece brought to mind Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’.
You have a unique, highly-readable voice, Christian. Good luck with your MA.