I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs:
(John Milton, 1673)
I
A well-known poet recently remarked
“I like to watch the breeze-blown bamboo sway.”
Inordinately fazed, that comment sparked
Disdain, rage, in me. Like a burro’s bray,
Most modern poetry blithely inveighs
Egomaniac sensibility—
The breeze blown plants (how lovely!), sunlight’s play
On the wife’s nude skin—the humility,
The joy, pain, dismay, and light each day brings.
My father’s death, my daughter’s birth, and love,
Always love. Such flip poetic art flings
Away the world, narrowly confines, shoves
Ev’rything aside except my narrow
Whims and wants, the blood of my own marrow.
II
Once, poems argued with god, lamented
Baleful politics, confronted evil—
Armed us with words and will that fermented
To spirits the swill we swam in. Fevered
By that strong, bitter drink, we often rose,
Threw off the feel-good drug of circuses
And sweet, baked goods. Real poets bite, and pose
Blunt queries, provoke earthy purposes.
Job, in measured verse, sought his redemption
From the misery god’s idiotic
Wager steeped him in. Milton’s tart gumption—
Pope and Swift, even Bill Blake’s psychotic
Rage, thunder, bright burning, force us to see
This bleak, scorched world—defined by poetry.
(5/19/10)
