The words that lacerated
sentenced sentences,
inked on parchment
from the ancient laws
are left to be deciphered
later in the antechamber
behind the door of this,
your dusty crypt.
The swords have dulled
and can no longer hurt
his soft librarian hands.
Yet there linger afterwards,
scabbed and scarred
a trace of past. Of you.
Crypt by Nicholas Roerich
Today I join the Open Link Night at dVerse, where Gayle will host. Any poem and poet is welcome. The bar opens at 3 PM EST. Come join the fun with your one fun.
May 12, 2016
The swords have dulled
and can no longer hurt
my soft librarian hands.< great image conjured up there.
Nice piece for sure.
Beautiful poem, Björn!
And I’ve been meaning to join dVerse for quite a while now. Somehow, I felt a little intimidated by the scope of the whole thing. I’ll sit down, and spend a little more time with it first.
Thank you so much for hosting it. It is a very kind and generous thing to do, and builds community beautifully.
Today it’s a free for all…any poem can be linked up…
Really nice. A difficult topic to handle, and you’ve done it well.
love the dulled swords that can no longer hurt soft librarian hands. A very mystical feel to your piece today. 🙂
Mystical, fantasy, metaphor; terrific piece, brother. Your closing lines lead me to believe this is a letter to a lost love; an appeal, an explication. Nice job on it. On the second read, I got the Asian feel to it, the Zen underpinnings.
this feels like a dry tomb / tome, antique & ageless in its ancience. lovely, thought-provoking piece.
The power of words to cut deeply is perfectly encapsulated in your poem.
Yes, this does feel mystical and from a time long ago with the reference to the laws on parchment. And what a great word is “deshiffered”!
Yet there linger afterwards,
scabbed and scarred
a trace of past..
These lines are so powerful 🙂
Upon rereading your poem, Bjorn, the feeling of a past lover scorning you, rings out, like a church bell, on a Sunday. Great uses of metaphors, throughout the poem.
They are powerful words…and even if done in the past, if well captured can still affect me deeply ~ Such is the gift of the poet or writer to transcend over time ~ Well done Bjorn ~
I liked it! But the ending seemed like some bad memories?
unum non ex usu si
fieri potest nihil
ut exacueret nobis
ut ventres
————
Good piece
made me realize
how often we
en”crypt” ourselves
Interesting choice of words here: deshiffered…love the use of it in this. How very like so many ways we think of lost love, past love. A dark poem but only in color. I’ve re-read twice. Just gets more interesting every read.
I love the image/verbiage of ‘sentenced sentences’. A great write, Bjorn!
The imagery in this lines are captivating and enticing:
The swords have dulled
and can no longer hurt
my soft librarian hands.
Where does your inspiration come from?
I truly love this poem. It’s another one of my favorite by you. 🙂
There is power in experience, and what are words (written/spoken in the right way) if not experience that happens in the mind? Even when their freshness is no more, their echos do all kinds of things.
Really love this.
I love that this also becomes “deciphered.”
And those library hands. Fantastic.
(“deshiffered” also becomes “deciphered,” for me.)
A terrific poem for OLN – defying category, but sending images through my brain.
That word “deshiffered” is a bridge between French “déchiffré” and English “deciphered”. I like your word best of all.
This feels like an interlude in a much longer story, Such teasing with the images! My curiosity goes forth.
A plentitude of metaphors pulling the past into the present where it can no longer harm. Well done, Bjorn. —– Suzanne
Yet there linger afterwards,
scabbed and scarred
a trace of past. Of you.
There have to be traces of the past. More of those love gone sour. These always manage to provoke one’s mind incessantly that put a bad picture to past feelings for a loved one. Happens all the time!
Hank
Had to look up deshiffered and it made the depth of the poem clearer. Wow!
This is so evocative – I love the contrast between battle scars and librarian soft hands.
When I Google “deshiffered”, your poem is the first three entries, very good! That’s totally shiffering 🙂
Old wounds are never truly gone. We carry them forever. Lovely capture!
I love the other-timedness of your wording (not other-worldliness), even though there is no such word in English. It has a feel of another time.
Well, my mind went in a completely different direction with this – but, who knows, maybe I’m completely off base. I took the piece to be a metaphor for ancient dogma: religious? perhaps, or law? that has incited tyrannical acts acted upon by the uneducated taking the words literally (as so often seems to happen) “words that lacerated
sentenced sentences”. “soft librarian hands” implied – for me – that the words are finally be read by an individual schooled in decyphering these kind of text. The scabs and the scars are the damage inflicted (in the past) – stirred on by these words. And “you” I read as referring to the prophet or rhetorician who originally inked the words on parchment. I do see how it could be old correspondence from a long ago lover, also. But my head went to prophets and such first … perhaps it was that parchment, Ha!
The swords have dulled
and can no longer hurt
my soft librarian hands.
Yet there linger afterwards,
scabbed and scarred
a trace of past. Of you.
I feel a longing for a time when words between two people could carry a lethal potency. Love this.
I have to say that I really like where your poetic mind takes you without a specific prompt. The last stanza is a treasure!
After a day off, I’ll be doing a lot of reading today! 🙂 Starting here is always a pleasure. I especially like the first three lines here….but the entire poem is such a meaningful one! Really enjoyed this, Bjorn.
Lacerating words……….says so much more than “cutting” words.
The past may pass us by but can leave scars. Very nice Bjorn! Hugs!
I love this part best:
“The swords have dulled
and can no longer hurt
my soft librarian hands.”
What an intriguing image. 🙂
deshiffered – what does this mean? I looked it up and can not find it on the net.
I like sentenced sentences – as if they are locked up themselves, in bindings perhaps.
I feel like the librarian himself is in a bit of exile.
deciphered 🙂 my Swenglish