cleverness

how clever of you to write this. how clever of me to read, how clever this birth into madness, how cunning the mind, how facile the heart. I so love your poetry, Victor! ~A "What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal." Albert Pine

And Rumi: Love is the ark appointed for the righteous, Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape. Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition. I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart. Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair. I want a heart which is split, part by part, because of the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longing and complaint to it. You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life? * Love is the ark appointed for the righteous, Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape. Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.

This is a nice write. Clean and well-conceived and nicely executed with room for improvement. The imagery is concise, the tone is consistent, the poem is accessible, the poem is long (I am prejudiced toward the short poem, so I will concede that up front). Some stanzas cite man’s cleverness (marked with ****). Other stanzas speak of nature’s cleverness. Choose one or the other as a theme for your poem. Being selective will fix the length, the poem will read more smoothly, and will better deliver the punch at the end. Myself, I think limiting yourself to the natural images until the gun lines would be stronger. Delete the last stanza ("beware...cleverness.") It's implicit. Drop the “how clever” after the first couple of stanzas. The reader doesn’t need so much prompting, and the repetition detracts from the imagery and musicality. Hold off until the closing about firearms. Finally, this good poem merits a more clever title. Cleverness how clever of bees to make honey from flowers’ nectars to sweeten our cakes how clever the fingers of knitters that create sweaters to keep us warm**** how clever the coffee bean to grow at all speeding up our days how clever cups and bowls to hold our drinks and food**** how clever the moon to govern seas’ tides making kelp dance gracefully how clever of carbon to be so patient, creating diamonds after centuries of heat and pressure how clever the comet to bravely fly through frozen space giving us such shows of wonder how clever paper makers to make virgin white sheets for writers to inscribe**** how clever camera’s film to capture light images that fill family albums**** how clever pencil’s graphite waiting to write surrounded by wood**** how clever the cobbler’s needle to make shoes to protect our feet**** how clever photons of light making it possible for us to see how clever clock’s tic-toc to measure passing of time**** how clever of humans to make guns that bark and bite beware of too much cleverness.

Hmmmmm im loath to pull this poem apart as i think it is lovely and written from the heart, however what Nicole has said about the repetition of ''how clever'' could be true, it may be more powerful with just the first stanza saying how clever, How clever, Of the bee's ect ect. the lines are great, the visual pictures interesting and stimualting, I also get what nicoles saying about the use of one theme with the guns at the end, saying that, i like the way you have mixed nature with human things, that is real life huh. vix

beware of too much cleverness. such a wise wrap up for a poem with a very easy wording yet with a wisdom of a monk.

I can appreciate all but the last stanza as I am very much pro-gun! Be that as it may, this is a splendid piece and deserves to be read again and again!