Maledictions of the Under-River

There are places we don’t visit anymore—not because they disappeared, but because we learned how to pass over them quickly.

Maledictions of the Under-River was written from the sense that something important has been left beneath us, still moving, still speaking, even as the surface rushes on. The under-river in this poem is not a realm of monsters or punishment. It is a place of what was once named and later dismissed.

Words go there.

Vows go there.

Beliefs that once had weight but no longer fit the tone of the room.

What unsettles me is not that cultures change—that is natural—but how easily change becomes mockery. How laughter can replace listening. How calling something “ruin” can feel clever enough to excuse cruelty.

This poem watches that process without shouting at it.

For most of the poem, the speaker stands at a distance, listening to what moves beneath roots and stone. But there is one moment where distance breaks. A simple admission: I have felt. Not as confession. Not as apology. Just acknowledgment that forgetting is not abstract. It cuts. It teaches hardness. It leaves marks.

And still, the poem does not ask to retrieve what has been lost.

What lies beneath does not beg for rescue.

It waits—whole, intact, unashamed.

That is what stays with me: the idea that what we abandon does not necessarily rot. Sometimes it simply continues, out of sight, carrying its story until someone is willing to bend close enough to hear what silence still knows how to say.

This is not a poem of comfort.

It is a poem of attention.

And perhaps attention, offered without irony, is the smallest form of repair we still have.

Read the full poem and analysis tomorrow 06th: https://alkonda.com/2026/02/06/maledictions-of-the-under-river/

© Al Konda · The Poetry Elite