"Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane" by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo‘The Screen Is Life’ by Michael Charles Maibach The Society December 17, 2020 Covid-19, Culture, Poetry 1 Comment The screen is life, The screen is king, The screen is now Our everything. The place we learn, The place we meet, The place we go When friends we greet. Our church on-line, Our school remote, Our office closed, Just emails wrote. What did they do In days long gone, When plagues arrived— They sang what song? They had no screens To hide behind, Retreat from life Did not divine. What lessons now Do we take up When future times Present this cup? . . Michael Charles Maibach began writing poems at age nine. Since then he has continued writing poems, and sharing them with friends. His career has involved global business diplomacy. He is a native of Peoria, Illinois. Today Michael resides in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. More of his poems are found at www.MaibachPoems.us or on Facebook. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)Trending now: One Response Margaret Coats December 19, 2020 As Mr. Maibach has had a day to answer, but has not done so, I will tell how I understood the questioned words. Retreat from life [hiding behind screens]/[They] Did not divine [to be a way of dealing with deadly plague], in answer to the question of the previous stanza. The inversion can be problematic because the subject pronoun is so far away. Substituting past tense for past participle is usually no problem, because in regular verbs they are the same (walk, walked, walked). In irregular verbs, there are sometimes two past participles (smite, smote, smote or smitten–acceptable current usage according to the Shorter OED). This is how I understood line 13. However, for the verb “write,” I find that the past tense is “wrote” and the two past participles are “writ” and “written,” so the objection is valid.
Margaret Coats December 19, 2020 As Mr. Maibach has had a day to answer, but has not done so, I will tell how I understood the questioned words. Retreat from life [hiding behind screens]/[They] Did not divine [to be a way of dealing with deadly plague], in answer to the question of the previous stanza. The inversion can be problematic because the subject pronoun is so far away. Substituting past tense for past participle is usually no problem, because in regular verbs they are the same (walk, walked, walked). In irregular verbs, there are sometimes two past participles (smite, smote, smote or smitten–acceptable current usage according to the Shorter OED). This is how I understood line 13. However, for the verb “write,” I find that the past tense is “wrote” and the two past participles are “writ” and “written,” so the objection is valid.
