Here is the first poem I wrote for Ink Pantry's Dr Zhivago competition. It was inspired by Pasternak's poem Hamlet and its themes of toil and destiny.
Pasternak
I walk over the cold soil to touch
the black tree trapped in its place
Its arms stretch towards
the winter sun's warm face.
My house behind rings its bell,
the sound radiates to every ear
fixing their fleeting moment
of this troubled year.
Sky: let me write my lines
for the act you planned long ago.
Let me sketch a smile
in your script of sorrow.
A black leaf falls and flees,
runs over the field
toyed by a wind
which flows from tomorrow.
The reference about tomorrow refers to my reasoning that the future determines the present more than the reverse. We can remember the past, or misremember it, and all of our information about the past (or present, of course, everything we see is the past, even if only slightly) is imperfect. The past, if we change our memories, is not certain, never certain, but the future sort of is... the future is more certain than the past because it lacks the imperfection of observation, so truth, reality and 'effect' more easily flows from the future to the past than the other way.
The philosophy of determinism and fate is present is Pasternak's work as well as my stoic beliefs. My follow-up poem, the one I ultimately won the competition with, also touches on these themes. In the poem above, the rhyming was a bit too strong it seemed to lack a dramatic instance... it's like a sketch that flows free like whip at the end. Those last lines are probably the best part, so I used the imagery of the leaf (the leaf becomes the man, the child of the black tree, these are the three characters in the poem). In theme, and by way of the leaf, the second poem flows from this and they make a pair.
