“Nearly everything we are taught is false except how to read.”
– Jim Harrison
Sometimes everyone reads it wrong –
in darkness you pulled your own cart
to Tyburn.
Look that up
or leave it hanging,
so much lost to me.
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qbit 
Sharp!
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Need to know how you read this.
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Or was it finally too terse.
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Not too terse. When I say ‘sharp’ I mean, as a blade. Pulling your own cart to Tyburn – walk in darkness, alone, to the gallows, killing yourself. Reflecting the quote – the ability to read, both literally and figuratively, is what enables us to judge the validity of the things we are taught. That is how we think for ourselves. If we opt to not read, we are our own hangman, alone in the dark. Your final line connects us as people. If I fail to read, the loss is not just mine – it is yours as well.
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OK!!! Whew! Perfect. Was generated from thinking about how everyone around the people who’ve hung themselves recently in the news all didn’t see it coming, e.g., didn’t read it right. And nowhere for any of us to put it, we’re at a loss, along with the actual loss.
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This took me to Wilde’s Reading Gaol because of the No Man an Island feel about it. I felt this quite strongly as we are grappling with a closer-to-home suicide from a few days back.
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So sorry to hear that.
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(Thanks – it was someone that our kids knew but I was blindsided by the details. I lack the toughness to manage that part. And, again, ‘no one saw it coming.’ That part is a myth.)
Your poem is remarkably strong! The 28 Days works for you 🙂 Keep writing.
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Let’s see… 1100ish to 1783. Speaker’s Corner. Hanging Tree. But only for the “untitled”?
Or… suicide?
Wanna bet something else is going on? (Just for grins and giggles…)
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I hadn’t thought of the “Untitled” angle as to who would hang at Tyburn. Interesting catch, although I think they hung pretty much everyone there, common and nobility alike. Was mostly the suicide angle, and how everyone around always says they didn’t see it coming, e.g., didn’t read it right. Then not wanting to spare the reader of the poem the grimness and loss, but they’re going to have to struggle with the text to get that read. Untitled then was to just let the trapdoor swing open without ceremony, without handholds.
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I thought they had more “interesting” ways of dealing with misbehaving landed gentry. I would need to read more about the brutality of the earlier British monarchy. But I get enough of that kind of reading over the internet… literature is becoming a ball peen hammer. Everything is seen as being a nail. Bam Bam Bam!
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LOL! Yep.
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An extremely rich write with meaning in every line.
Thankfully, I’ve been educated by the comments above.
You’ve touched on the common thread that reading isn’t just confined to books. I’ll hazard a guess and say that 99% of our reading (or not)- is to do with signs and seasons. I’m appreciating the depth of the given quote as well as your take on it.
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Thanks Vivian. I was hoping folks would read the comments, as I knew it wasn’t obvious (which was part of it too.)
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Short, sharp, and clever (the leave it hanging with Tyburn).
“Untitled” also made me think about lives ended by suicide, but we don’t really know the story (as in you’re the author of your own story. . .).
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Thank you. Good point about the title. I didn’t think that directly, but was sort of there in my unconscious. Quick question – did you recognize the Tyburn reference, or needed to read the other comments?
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I knew about Tyburn, but I’m a historian. 🙂
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Ah yes!
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