Analysis of A Silent Witness



In this graveyard
Where ceases not fire,
Where ceases not lamentations,
I am for eons a silent witness.

Lone I stand on these rolling slopes,
Green fields lie beyond the silent road.
A distant whistle is heard
And I know the last train is also gone.

To so many parting moments
I am an emotional witness.
To every curling smoke
I bid a silent adieu.

Under my cool shades
Meet the forefathers of this hamlet.
And they whisper through my foliage
Unto the perching birds and passing wind.

No cry shakes my roots,
No howling wind wakes the dead.
Beyond the din of the world
All are equal under my sprawling shades.
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Scheme XXAA AXXX AAXX AXXX AXXAA
Poetic Form
Metre 011 110110 11011 1111001010 11111101 111010101 0101011 0110111101 11101010 111010010 1100101 1101001 10111 10101110 01101110 100110101 11111 1101101 0101101 1110101101 1
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 653
Words 130
Sentences 10
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 5
Lines Amount 21
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 104
Words per stanza (avg) 23

About this poem

In this poem, a tree with sprawling shades in a graveyard is the silent witness. 'No cry shakes my roots, No howling wind wakes the dead. Beyond the din of the world All are equal under my sprawling shades'.

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Written on April 17, 2009

Submitted by ravi_panamanna on December 23, 2023

39 sec read
6

Ravi Panamanna

My actual name is Subramanian A. I am a retired official of the State Bank of India. Settled in Palakkad, Kerala, India. My literary awards include The Barath Award for Literature (best story), and the Poiesis Awards both in Poetry and short story, all conducted jointly by Xpress publications.com. My interests cover photography, philosophy, and science. Google search under Ravi Panamanna would take the searcher to my various links. more…

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