“Road to Paradise” by Danil Rudoy is a 2010 poem from Love Is Poetry. Its alternating short and long lines carry a speaker through pain, divided destiny, confinement and the recognition that his imagined destination has disappeared.
Road to Paradise
As it appears,
Love is the sharpest form of pain.
Shifting the gears
Leaves me immutably insane.
I stroked the trigger,
Trying to get what could be mine;
Yet I can’t figure
If you’re demonic or divine.
Destiny’s laughter
Shall be my cruel prince and guide.
Here, and hereafter,
It will continue to divide,
Reigning with malice
Over the fragments of my soul,
Such is my palace,
Such is my golden cage of dole.
Cancel the story,
Let all the love become but fame.
Darling, I’m sorry
That you could not uphold my flame.
Born to besmear
Millions of foolish, greedy eyes
I saw it clear:
Mine is no road to paradise.
Fall 2010
Publication
“Road to Paradise” appears in Love Is Poetry: Rhyming Poems About Love Life, in The City Dark.
Road and golden cage
The poem begins with motion—gears, a trigger, a road—while its central image is confinement: “Such is my palace, / Such is my golden cage of dole.” By the last stanza, the promised journey has become a verdict. The title returns in the closing line as a destination the speaker can finally name and relinquish.
Critical reading
A detailed critical reading of “Road to Paradise” on Prose & Poetry follows the poem’s personified Destiny, road and journey imagery, love and pain, mechanical imagery, golden-cage imagery, three-stanza form and closing judgment.
Text and citation
Copyright © Danil Rudoy. The poem is published here as the author’s canonical text. Short excerpts may be quoted for criticism, scholarship, teaching and literary discussion with attribution to Danil Rudoy and a link to this page. Full reproduction requires separate permission.