A short pantoum inspired by the opening line of “Gravity’s Rainbow”

A screaming comes across the sky.
A sound we haven’t heard before:
A distant wailing thin and high,
It drops into a dreadful roar.

A sound we haven’t heard before,
To freeze the blood within our veins
It drops into a dreadful roar:
The cries of countless fears and pains.

To freeze the blood within our veins,
A distant wailing thin and high—
The cries of countless fears and pains—
A-screaming, comes across the sky.

3 thoughts on “A short pantoum inspired by the opening line of “Gravity’s Rainbow””

  1. The photograph is one of the standard ones supplied by the template in WordPress, and is, fortunately, perfect for the title of the blog.

    The poem was written in response to a friend who asked if I had ever written a pantoum. It’s an interesting form, and one that I’d never experimented with before. Most pantoums tend to be longer than 3 stanzas, but it was my first attempt and it was late at night.

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