Between Prologue and Epilogue



let it burn
only embers await fire
as ashes await embers

somewhere between
kindling and extinction,
prologue and epilogue,
flames and stories
consumed and opiated

a delusion of infinite existence
unbroken by death or irrelevance
covered as dust or denial
the bookshelves of our Truth
the emptiness of our Room

the papered panes
or those covered with the opacity
of disuse and dirt,
let in no sliver of sunshine
on which the Dance of Dust and Entropy
could claim sanity of Decay,
that inevitable nemesis of Perpetuity -
the perpetuity of Conceit,
the perpetuity of a phantasmagoria
called Life

let it burn
so what?
so what if we left the water
at the edge of our desert
so what if in the end
ashes cover the sand
and the extinction is of ourselves
and not the fire
the fire that consumed everything
everything that was worth it
between Prologue and Epilogue

About this poem

The poem is a reflection on life, whether it amounts to something or is best forgotten as nothing significant, merely irrelevant, or just some conceit or hallucination of the 'liver'.

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Written on October 25, 2023

Submitted by Pratip on October 27, 2023

49 sec read
45

Quick analysis:

Scheme Abx xxcxd eexxx xddxxxddxx Adbdddxbxdc
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 864
Words 165
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 3, 5, 5, 10, 11

Pratip Sen Gupta

I am a poet from India and write mainly in English, Hindi, and Urdu. I have been writing poetry since 1972. For me poetry (as very distinct from prose) leaves the poet once it is placed before a reader. Every reader should be able to make something of it in their own way. What inspired the poet becomes irrelevant. Poetry can never be so fixed as to mean exactly the same thing to everyone. That is prose. I am a Corporate Executive, now retired, and live in Gurgaon, India which is a part of the Larger National Capital Region of India contiguous with New Delhi. more…

All Pratip Sen Gupta poems | Pratip Sen Gupta Books

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    "Between Prologue and Epilogue" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 Oct. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/172818/between-prologue-and-epilogue>.

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    Do not go gentle into that good _______. Rage, rage against the dying of the light
    A night
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