Ozymandias - a poem
Ozymandias
At twenty, he stared
into the eyes of a tiger,
old and tired. Uncaring,
he hung it in his hunting hall.
During the Great War,
decorated for gallantry,
he was the toast
of his hometown.
He settled down,
saving the poor,
as a lawyer
of no small renown.
In his golden years,
he lost her.
His kids sent him
to a nursing home.
The staff smiled
and nodded when he talked,
silently ignoring him.
And he remembered the tiger.
ooohh... devastating poem!
"The staff smiled/and nodded when he talked,/silently ignoring him./And he remembered the tiger."
!
Thanks!
Ha - you and I were typing the same thing at the same time, @bennetitalia.
Devastating is right.
FANTASTIC
Ohhhhh WOW
This is brutal! Beautiful!
At twenty, he stared
into the eyes of a tiger,
At this point it should not be a spoiler if I saw what next, but ok, I won't,
In his golden years... a nursing home.
This is SO cool!
It's like a poem version of Old Man and the Sea, kinda, sorta.
Not that I know how to critique poetry.
But this... this speaks to me.
You don't need to be a poet to critique poetry, just human. :) I think that leaving poetry to experts, or music, or dancing, etc., is sad. Those are important parts of being human.
Thanks for your kind comments. The Old Man and the Sea is a book I enjoy, but I had not thought of it when writing this. I do see that there are some similarities now also.
I love the first verse @whoshim
I have been drawn to tigers in my imagination since an early age and often dream of them. So the imagery in your poem struck me quite profoundly. I like the way that it starts with this hunters act of destruction and ends with his final decline of old age. Ha ha, but maybe that's just me ;-) I feel more pity for the tiger than the guy in the poem
Thanks! I tried to make the man more sympathetic after the opening stanza, but I guess it didn't work for you. :)
This is really good.
I have to admit that the 4th stanza caught me unprepared, as I was imagining this is about a hero of old. But in a way, it is.
After all, wasn't that Ozymandias's fate, to have a small epitaph left behind? All those great works, torn down with the passage of time and uncaring generations down the river of all things?
And this poem does say more with less. I do really like the third line, as the "uncaring" can apply to both hunter and hunted. And then it repeats, thematically. We are doomed to repeat our past.
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