Unrelated related poems

They don't have to be whole poems. It's enough when an original metaphor or a characteristic phrase is more or less repeated in two poems by two different authors independently, without having any idea about the other one. Sometimes poems could have been written years apart, sometimes about the same time. For instance, there is a famous Vladimir Mayakovsky's poem "A cloud in pants". But almost the same metaphore appeared about the same time or even a little bit earlier in a poem by another Russian poet, perhaps "a cloud in trousers". That other poet complained jokingly or bitterly that Mayakovsky has stolen his trousers--he was known for special, elegant white trousers. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the other poet, and it's hard to find in in Internet (can you help?).

Thus let's collect pairs (or triples??) of unrelated related poems. Professionals should provide many examples. Being an amateur, let me show one pair, from rec.arts.poems (however the older one, mine, was written several years before Internet). First I'll present the newer one, by Tom Wachtel, known to you already from another thread here. Then I'll follow by my own--the older one. Once again, it's fun to discuss poemtry by looking at different pieces, translations, etc,; and in this case by checking on the unrelated relatives.

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Tom Wachtel
rec.art.poems, 1991-10-24


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Comparisons

When you discuss a poem about love then your main focus is on love; when on a cancer disaster then the focus is on the cancer disaster; etc. When you talk about two texts at the same time then your main focus is not anymore on love or on a cancer disaster but on the differences between texts--and that is what will make you see the poetic elements, you become sensitive to poetry more than to the story.

Thus let me list a few moments in the two poems presented above, which otherwise would probably escape a reader most of the time. Let's start with the Tom Wachtel's poem:

1. the language is laid back, informal;
2. we have something of a conversation;
3. Tom has used the abbreviation diff, which is superbly integrated with the poem, with the theme of the cliff, etc. It takes your breath away. You anticipate the sudden finish. Of course diff stands for difference.
4. The action goes down, and then at the end suddenly up, with its beautiful blue accent.

My own poem uses a conservative language. It has a strong zoom effect. At the end it hides anti-logic: the death and the end of a person is considered the same while in the poem they are two different things. This paradox is based on the true fact that sometimes people who fall down die before they reach the bottom. (Thus, against the grammar, the reader identifies crashing at the bottom with END. It doesn't make sense logically--and this is why this is poetry and not an undergraduate logical textbook 215. Like other artistic means, anti-logic can make a poem or can destroy it.)

alright, done hacking off...
the strength of Wachtel's poem is the ambiguity, is he talking about suicide or just taking some plunge? otherwise it is near cliche. i.e.
the sky is blue (sad) for you in the former or
the sky is blue (clear) for you in the later, but as we can not be sure...
your poem with the zooming sand has the stronger image, however, I would question merciful as being too leading, and the last line seems suspect
to catch us softly before we end
I would tend to word it as:
to catch us before the end
I do see reasons for we and softly, you have suffixed soft, why? suffixing weakens the word, the word and the concept is soft, is this adding to the softness? Since you won't answer, the questions are rhetorical, and largely for anyone else reading.
Now this concept of anti-logic intrigues me, and like everything else can make or destroy a poem, or even both. It seems similar to anti-sense.

Eliot's
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men

well wtf if we are hollow, what are we stuffed with?
It appears to contradict and must be resolved, the fact of resolution imparts a strength between the two lines that would not be there with a similar word use i.e.

We are the hollow men
We are the EMPTY men

mere redundancy

but then, just my take

re Wachtel's poem, I can easily get two readings, perhaps the intent, perhaps the intent was to try to combine the two readings
Anti-sense