ManicDDaily

Opening of "Somewhere", Music by Leonard Bernstein, Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Sheila Moore working with dVerse Poets Pub has a wonderful poetics prompt on onomotopoeia today.  Boom!  A great excuse to escape from the heaviness that has characterized my recent posts.  (I am also linking this to Victoria C. Slotto’s poetry blog, liv2write2day, which has a prompt about music and words.)

The following is an old sonnet, posted before (sorry!), but somewhat revised.  I’m not sure that it quite qualifies as onomotopoeic poetry, but it does focus on sound, in this case an eerie music made by track and train car at certain subway stations on the IRT Lexington Avenue line.

“Somewhere” on the MTA

The subway sings its broken refrain:
the opening bars of “Theeeere’s aaa Plaaaace
For Us” from West Side Story.  The train
croons the first three notes as it leaves the dais
of the platform, the tune subsiding
then to squeak and wind and roar as we race
to a-harmonic levels, soon riding
at a speed without space for Bernstein’s trace
of tragic lovers defiant of fate
and family.  Yet…at every station…
there’s a plaace—again.  Who of those who wait
hear the song of that longed-for destination,
harmonic haven–beyond how, beyond where–
amazed that the Six Train nearly takes them there?

I am also linking this post to Gooseberry Garden’s Poetry Picnic.  (The prompt relates to NYTimes headlines–the subway? Hmmm…)