Special Feature: "Flatland: Variations on a Ballad, Part IV" by the Editor

Flatland:  Variations on a Ballad

Steven Wittenberg Gordon

IV

Cold crags

covered in snow

my eagle’s scream

echoes

on an icy wind--

a wolf song

from eagle’s beak--

my voice surrounds you.

My hug is grizzly.

My foot roots hold.

My blood flows

and I am warm.

But I awake in pain

on a bed of blades

in a geometric plane.

My spirit fades.

Poet's Notes:  It would be a stretch to call Part IV a ballad.  It retains the traditional four-line stanza, but the stanzas are hardly quatrains--one line is even a single word.  The easily understood musical qualities of the original and second versions have become strained, more surreal, with only imperfect echoes in the final stanza.