Alan John Branford - A Man of Potential

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A Man of Potential

I
A man of potential I’d heard them describe me,
And I had believed them and dreamed of life’s journey.
But I was too ready to help with the dull tasks,
Obliging and willing to do what the team asks.
The others were ruthless to boost reputation,
And asking for help soon became exploitation.
The card game of life had me cast as the joker.
The man of potential? The man mediocre!

II
I look to the past where my plans and my dreams lie
As twisted contortions in heaps where the hope died.
I look to the present and what do I see here,
Perfidious tragedy worthy of Shakespeare.
The ivory tower now stands there in ruins,
And cockroaches sit at the desks of the humans.
I look to the future, and all is miasma,
A swirling rank mist that obscures where the paths are.

III
I enter this fog now, with dreams left in tatters,
No purpose in life left, it no longer matters.
I walk in the foul bog of pointless endeavours,
The legacy left of my time as professor.
And missed opportunities gnaw at my entrails,
My gut stewing over their intimate details.
Grotesque and lewd faces of friends who’d betrayed me
Emerge from the mist just to add to my mis’ry.

IV
Ten years it has been since I entered this nightmare,
In all of this time, there’s no light and no fresh air.
I sit and examine the course of my lifetime,
And slowly epiphany dawns in the meantime.
My legacy lies in the students I’ve tutored,
Their love of the learning remains undiluted.
The mist starts to clear, and I see them diurnal.
I’m dead now, at last, but my soul is eternal.

Copyright © 1 July 2024 Alan John Branford

This poem is written in a strict amphibrachic metre. Each foot is a three-syllable amphibrach, accentuated as | unstressed | stressed | unstressed |. Each line has four feet, an amphibrachic tetrameter. Each pair of lines is a rhyming couplet, which are arranged as an octet. The poem has four octets.

The amphibrachic metre is extremely rare in English poetry, and indeed some text books on English poetic metre do not even mention it. The well-known hymn "Almighty, victorious, God only wise" is a rare example of a lyric written in amphibrachic metre, but with the line terminating with an iamb (| unstressed | stressed |). The Leonard Cohen song "Famous Blue Raincoat" is a more contemporary example of a mainly amphibrachic metre.

The amphibrachic metre sounds slightly peculiar in English poetry, which gives an amphibrachic poem a disturbing edge.

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Last Update: 01 July 2024