Narcissus / Echo

[lnhammer]

Narcissus	Echo
is the core story remembered as ourselves we think his faults ours see ourselves watching ourself looking	is our response an afterthought lingering away a broken heart to nothing
Yet they were once separate     tales joined by a canny Roman two halves of the whole really the same: the story is the heart

—8 December 2002, 19 January 2003

That more or less gets the 'right' formatting.

---L.

Comments

[ex_asakiyume313]

Oh, I just love this. It must be one of the nicest example of form informing content since George Herbert's "Easter Wings."

I love, love, love the parallel halves, up top

see ourselves watching a broken heart
ourself looking to nothing


It breaks the heart a little to read it. Wonderful.

[lnhammer]

Thankee for the kind words. Reactions to this have been sharply divided between the form working very well and being too clever by half. Many readers have trouble figuring out whether to read across or down in the first half (when of course, it's both).

---L.

[ex_asakiyume313]

Oh yes, part of the pleasure comes in reading it both ways. Japanese poetry primes me for that, though. And--pantoums. They do too.