The Plain
Jean Arp 1886 (Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp Straßburg, Alsace-Lorraine) – 1966 (Basel, Canton of Basel-Stadt)
I was alone with a chair on a plain
Which lost itself in an empty horizon.
The plain was flawlessly paved.
Nothing, absolutely nothing but the chair and I
were there.
The sky was forever blue,
No sun gave life to it.
An inscrutable, insensible light
illuminated the infinite plain.
To me this eternal day seemed to be projected --
artificially-- from a different sphere.
I was never sleepy nor hungry nor thirsty,
never hot nor cold.
Time was only an abstruse ghost
since nothing happened or changed.
In me Time still lived a little
This, mainly, thanks to the chair.
Because of my occupation with it
I did not completely
lose my sense of the past.
Now and then I'd hitch myself, as if I were a horse, to the chair
and trot around with it,
sometimes in circles,
and sometimes straight ahead.
I assume that I succeeded.
Whether I really succeeded I do not know
Since there was nothing in space
By which I could have checked my movements.
As I sat on the chair I pondered sadly, but not desperately,
Why the core of the world exuded such black light.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 18, 2023
- 58 sec read
- 80 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AX XXB XC DA EX FX XX XB CFX BCXX E XXX FD |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,056 |
Words | 195 |
Stanzas | 13 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 1, 3, 2 |
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"The Plain" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/21295/the-plain>.
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