Improvisations: Light And Snow: 08

Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)



Many things perplex me and leave me troubled,
Many things are locked away in the white book of stars
Never to be opened by me.
The starr’d leaves are silently turned,
And the mooned leaves;
And as they are turned, fall the shadows of life and death.
Perplexed and troubled,
I light a small light in a small room,
The lighted walls come closer to me,
The familiar pictures are clear.
I sit in my favourite chair and turn in my mind
The tiny pages of my own life, whereon so little is written,
And hear at the eastern window the pressure of a long wind, coming
From I know not where.
How many times have I sat here,
How many times will I sit here again,
Thinking these same things over and over in solitude
As a child says over and over
The first word he has learned to say.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
85

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFAGCHIJKLMNOPQ
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 764
Words 153
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 19

Conrad Potter Aiken

Conrad Potter Aiken was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author born in Savannah Georgia whose work includes poetry short stories novels and an autobiography more…

All Conrad Potter Aiken poems | Conrad Potter Aiken Books

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