People passed
Me on the churchyard path,
That I walk
So oft,
Caught in my passing thoughts,
(Many now forgot)
Then came the rain again
To wash all who pass
Along this fleeting path.
People passed
Me on the churchyard path,
That I walk
So oft,
Caught in my passing thoughts,
(Many now forgot)
Then came the rain again
To wash all who pass
Along this fleeting path.
I have been playing around with Chat GPT, https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/. Below is a poem wholly composed by the artificial intelligence (AI), followed by my much shorter poem, which draws on that created by the AI.
The Poem as Composed by Chat GPT:
continue this poem: all love and lust ends in dust
All love and lust, like fleeting gusts, May lift us high, but then they must Descend to earth, to join the rust And crumble into grains of dust.
Though passion’s fire may burn so bright, It’s but a spark in endless night, And soon it fades, like dying light, To leave us empty, void of sight.
For all that’s born will surely die, And all that lives must say goodbye. No matter how we try and try, We’re bound to fall, to fade, to lie.
So let us love with open hearts, And let us cherish every part Of those we hold, before we depart And join the cycle, where we start.
For though all love and lust ends in dust, It’s in the moment, in the trust, That we find joy, that we find lust, That we find life, before we’re thrust Into the endless, timeless gust That leaves us naught but grains of dust.
My Rewrite of the Poem:
Though passion’s fire may burn so bright,
It’s but a spark in endless night,
And soon it fades, like dying light,
To leave us lost, to human sight.
For all that’s born will surely die,
And you and I must say goodbye.
No man can the great leveler deny,
And dust must take both you and I.
My dog kicks earth.
There is sleep.
And death,
Which is the final
Sleep in earth.
I have awoken to birdsong
And lain awake
Until sleep takes me again.
I measure time
With clocks. Birds and flowers
No not hours,
Nor do they see me
Conversing with time
In a half rhyming rhyme
Until my song is done.
In constant scrolling
We find Gradgrind,
Doling
Out the same
Diet
Of pleasure and pain
To the unquiet mind.
These trees
Speak to me
Of mortality.
Touching old bark
And cold gravestone,
I hark
To the birds
Still heard
By me.
I recall the nesting box
On my grandfather’s shed.
Blue Tits laid their eggs.
Some grew, and flew
Away.
January seems dead.
Yet, in the churchyard birds
Sing.
And, come the spring
Birds will lay in boxes
To the delight
Of young children.
And foxes bark
In the depths of night.
When young men find delight
Under a red bedspread
With girls who pass through
How many of them
Consider how cold
Is the hold of gold?
Time runs on
And youth turns to age.
Some still engage
With girls who pass through,
But all age,
And in time, are gone.
In dreams
It sometimes seems
That dark
Fantasy is reality.
In art we see
A kind of reality.
While inside the dreaming mind
Hides the truth of art.
On my way home
I pause for drink.
Then go to bed alone
And think,
‘Ere I sleep
Of my work and play
On the coming day.
Yet, I may
Forever stay
In sleep.