A Verse Or More Poem by Gretel Nabeta

A Verse Or More



Should we feel it as one verse?
This place in which our lives unfold,
No end, reverse or beginning,
A secret which untold remains.

Is there enough endless time
To build a mirror of this world?
Piece by piece, to build a rhyme
To life: a sail yet seen unfurled.

Or is this verse not by itself?
Another you, another they,
A poem on a dusty shelf,
A stranger to the light of day.

A stranger light which twinkles high,
Which in truth may just be us,
Sits atop the starry sky,
No greater than a speck of dust.

And so, life’s untold mystery
Rests in some shelf another day.
The least known rhyme in history,
Writ in water’s washed away.

So should we feel it as one verse?
This place in which our lives unfold,
No end, beginning or reverse,
A secret which remains untold.

POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
The main purpose of the poem “A verse or more” is to stimulate the reader’s thoughts on life. The first stanza is the odd one out, because it does not rhyme. The main reason for this is that if there is only “one verse”, there cannot be a rhyme which follows it. The “it” in the first stanza refers to a secret of life which will remain a secret for many years to come. The following stanza begins with a seemingly pointless question which basically asks if there will ever be another “mirror of this world”, given an infinite amount of time. That “mirror” refers to another Earth just like ours. Given enough time, anything can happen, but will there ever be an Earth exactly like ours if there is “enough endless time”? The alliteration shows the repetitiveness of time. In the same stanza, life is compared to a sail which has yet to be rolled down. The only way for something to happen while on a ship is for the sail to be rolled down. In this case, we are that ship, being pushed forward by dropping down the sail of life, being blown by the wind of time. These ideas are mentioned later on in the poem. The author then touches on the fact that there may be another verse to it after all. It is rather unimportant, because it has been left on a “dusty shelf”; it has been forgotten, never to see the light of day. The stars are mentioned as well, with the use of alliteration in “sits atop the starry sky”. The importance to this is that similar to time, space itself is endless. What we may be seeing every night in the brightness of stars, even though we do not know it, may simply be that “mirror” of ourselves. However, it is too small for us to make anything of it, since the stars seem “no greater than a speck of dust”. The author acknowledges the fact that he has not come to any conclusions, except for the fact that this verse which he seeks remains in that dusty shelf one more day. “Writ in water’s washed away” is another example of alliteration which the author uses. It is referring to the fact that this rhyme which the author has been looking for was written in water, hence it will never be found.
After reading the poem, you may have gotten a sense of repetitiveness in the rhythm of the poem. Each line is four beats long. This is simply a means through which the continuity of time and space is portrayed. However, the underlying message of this poem is that of the “multi-verse theory”. “One verse” in this sense can refer not only to a line in a poem, but also to the “uni-verse”. There may be only one universe, finite, in which there is only one copy of us. However, there may be “more verses”, or a “multi-verse” as it is referred to, in which there is another copy of Earth: “a mirror of this world”. The importance of the first stanza and the last stanza is that even though they are the exact same, two words have been inverted to make the last stanza rhyme. This gives a sense that in the first stanza, there may be no rhyme to this verse; therefore we may live in a universe, while in the last stanza there is rhyme, which shows that we may live in a multi-verse. This multi-verse basically means that there are parallel universes which may be exactly the same. Since the question of whether we live in a universe or a multi-verse remains unsolved, it is up to the reader to decide which one he believes to be true.
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