Apr '18 14
At first I thought this little rescuee would turn out to be a bit more upbeat than the ones to date, but no, it took an inevitable twist.

I kind of wrote myself into a corner at the end; I wanted a 'they' to finish but I hadn't paid attention and realised at the end that there wasn’t a 'they' in the source text. The word 'none', which might have been useful, wasn't there either.

And I adhere strictly to the rules of 'if it's not in the source jumble of words, I can't use it'. So for example if 'he' and 'would' are in the text but the contraction 'he’d' is not, I can't use 'he'd'.

The result was a more tragic ending than I'd expected.

I rescued this little one from pages 38 and 164 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.


Take me to you

Happy in himself, the wild-eyed child
laughed at first to see the face that sighed
to feel the breath that blew so sweet on cheek:
then he noticed that she could not kiss him
  alas, she could not kiss him, could not kiss him.

Once he thought he heard their voices, raised
with bitter passion to their faithful heaven
he interrupted, vowed he loved them deeply
then he noticed that she could not see him
  alas, she could not see him, could not see him.

He asked for wind to hush what tears were left
he asked for grace to spare their shining lives
he asked for happiness to light their dark
then he noticed he was nowhere near them
  alas, he would not know them, never know them.



Posted by Jennifer Liston

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