Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Akhmatova couplets

Take this poem, "Twenty-first. Night. Monday", by Anna Akhmatova and divide it into couplets as I have done below. Only use one couplet as a prompt and give the others to other writers (or save them for later) and use it as a prompt. This will allow you to focus only on the lines in the couplet, thus taking away the entire meaning of the original poem.
Twenty-first. Night. Monday.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.

Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why --
made up the tale that love exists on earth.

People believe it, maybe from laziness
or boredom, and live accordingly:

they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.

But the secret reveals itself to some,
and on them silence settles down...

I found this out by accident
and now it seems I'm sick all the time.

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