Written for:  dVerse Poets Pub - Poetics:  Opening Sentences
of Famous Novels  (posted by Lynda Lee Lyberg)

"Below are the sentences, with the Author and book title. Please reference which sentence you chose, either as an epigraph or author’s note."

1. ‘I am going to get into a lot of trouble.’ – Raymond Radiguet, Possessed by the Devil, Grasset 1923

2. ‘You all know the wild grief that besets us when we remember times of happiness.’– Ernst Junger, On the Marble Cliffs, John Lehmann, 1947

3. ‘All has become quiet in Moscow.’– Count L N Tolstoy, The Cossacks, Sampson Low, Morton, Searle & Rivington, 1878

4. ‘For a long time I used to go to bed early.’– Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (Remembrance of Things Past), Penguin, 1957

5. ‘No bondage is worse than the hope of happiness.’– Carlos Fuentes, Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone, Bloomsbury, 1995

6. ‘It was the summer that men first walked on the moon.’– Paul Auster, Moon Palace, Faber and Faber 1989

7. ‘The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind.’– Lawrence Durrell, Justine (Alexandria Quartet) Faber, 1961

8. ‘The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.’- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dent Dutton, 1955

9. ‘I am in my mother’s room.’– Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Grove Press Inc, 1976

10. ‘It is easy to forget that in the main we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs.’– Jim Harrison, The Road Home, Picador, 1999

11. ‘Long after their usual time, the wild boar were still coming to drink at the deserted pool.’– Roger Nimier,The Sad Children, Gallimard, 1951

12. ‘The winter sun, poor ghost of itself, hung milky and wan behind layers of cloud above the huddled roofs of the town.’– Thomas Mann, Tonio Kroger, Penguin, 1955


I have chosen, ‘The winter sun, poor ghost of itself, hung milky and wan behind layers of cloud above the huddled roofs of the town.’– Thomas Mann, Tonio Kroger, Penguin, 1955 for my inspiration.


At Winter's end
a pale, ghostly sun
is blasted out of
the sky, obliterated
by whistling bombs
designed to decimate
a country and its people.
A madman forces citizens
to huddle together
in school, basements–
where new babies
are born–and churches
for sanctuary, proven
unsafe.  Through blackened
debris of buildings,
some fled.  Others stayed,
fierce and resilient.  Will
a strong, brilliant sun
ever shine its golden
light on these innocent,
peaceful people?

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