- Non-Erotic Poetry
- Distaff
Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.
You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.
Click here
No. I shall speak no more. The minutes creep
and leave me too much time for taking stock
and making up the balance: as there are
no sons to carry on my line, in me
the clan has ended. Those fool daughters will
be carried off to further others' aims.
No more will they be known for what they are –
a once-integral part of our proud house.
My sword stays sheathed and on the silent wall
my shield forgets our noble arms. No more
will anybody flaunt them in the fray;
no woman's feeble arms can do them justice.
Dust will dim their colours while my sword
grows rusty in cold time's too long embrace.
The hours stand tangible like solid air
and in my weary mind grief's silence stays
inviolate. The slow, slow hours keep
me here – this bitter care won't cease before
there's no time left to me. I'll speak no more.
- COMMENTS
Cleardaynowalmost 10 years agoWhat a really intelligent poem. Particularly as it sympathetically shows old prejudice that flies in the face of modern prejudice. So he sees that he has descendants through his daughters but sees the end of his house, his line. A genuine loss, a genuine grief – for him.
.
As a rule I detest medieval and mock medieval poems – full of mighty swords, supposed valour and excruciating phony language. The sword is an empty metaphor for us today, only evoking what is in the minds of gamers and book readers – whereas the bomb or bullet or, for some poor people living in Africa, the machete can be genuine. But this cuts through to what runs deep within all of us. It perhaps asks what are the things that are not necessarily real which we ourselves hold to be so important.
And really good again to see your poem stepping out into new territory - well I haven’t got through your back catalogue so I assume it is new.
Anonymousalmost 10 years agoInteresting that you would write that, demure. Almost as if you were channeling some too proud old warrior from the past. No sons, or no sons left? The latter engenders more sympathy.
Five.
