poetry – Page 122 – don't confuse the narrator

winter approaches

When the white clouds lifted, they left behind
a hint of snow along the mountain ridge. The sky
is blue as any summer’s day and I walk to the village
in unbroken sunshine. On the way back, a neighbour
eases his donkey from amble to pause and greets me.
He wants some windfall apples “pa’ el guarro”. I agree,
but would so much prefer to let the patient burro
mumble fruit from my palm, not help to fatten
the squealing pig for Martinmas.

(First draft – which means I’ve only rewritten it half a dozen times and juggled the line breaks back and forth and to and fro, but haven’t added in additional material or stepped back from it very far.)
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facts and fictions

A few more thoughts on the subject of how accurate we should be when we write poetry:

A few days ago, I had cause to look up Keats’ On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, and I read the Wikipedia page. (The poem appears there, too.)

Despite what it says in the poem, it wasn’t “stout Cortez” who stood “Silent upon a peak in Darien”, but Nuñez de Balboa. But although the error was identified, apparently

“Keats chose to leave it in, presumably because historical accuracy would have necessitated an unwanted extra syllable in the line.”

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images: both photographic and poetic

One problem with trying to find illustrations for some of the pieces I post here is that I’m between cameras and the phone isn’t as adaptable as I’d like it to be, so the photos – particularly the ones that should be close ups – are fairly hit and miss.

These wonderfully clam-like toadstools would probably have made a better photo to go with the smallest room in all the world: