LORDS OF THE COSMOS

LORDS OF THE COSMOS (Monday 28th Feb 2011) - A poem about poetry... [418 words ]

Author’s Notes : This was one of the first pieces I wrote. In it I set myself the task of thinking about poetry in a general way and to lay down some ideas that I would need to return to from time to time.

What was it he said when he first spied her?

With what words did he declare, announce, woo and charm?  

And on what fruit and on what epic did he feast her?

With what wine dine and juice and caress imaginations chariots?

And on what benign ode did she sip, sup and quaffe with wonderment? 

For tis certain that with iambic pentameter and rhythmic meter he cooed, plyed and rose her.

Rhyme, Reason and Rhythm all queuing eager to greet and meet her & together conspire

Drumming out their whining, murmuring beat insistent bent on toning & tanning

Sometimes better sometimes missing the spot, perchance to stab on purpose & quicken the heart

With arrows from abandon’s quiver all soft, knitted as in the purling and quilted fine

Words they say are all we mere mortals own to take your heart away to horizons expanding

And like rumplestiliskin weave we pray the name of loves own on tablets that are not stone.

As coned islands exult, celebrate and emerge from mere consciousness

They sing to form as one roundelay in synch with the buzz of the jamboric madrigal

Line on line they the maidens say give us a cantata, go one gis a Ballard, a song you know

And with chanson a plenty and encomiums sonorously murmuring a frilly few

With nets of femion they tingle and turn castanets a swinging and swirling in

In the ballet and humming in the rhumba, even as foolish young boys grimace, snigger, and gurn

Who'er then is master of earthly twin triple tongue is lord of the cosmos too

Poetry you say, With roots, trunk, branches, leaves, bud, flower, fruit and seed a ripening

In the garden pastoral bucolic with leaves a lingulate and rhombic

With vine stalk that snake and root deep in subterranean passages and caves

And sing from there their sonnets that ripple and reverb and rubble in the underground

Echoing the coo cooing of maidens in bardic spring and the glad summer morning

Staccato its theme does punctuate and spine the whole thing through trunking its way to the canopy

Mesma, Amusma and Peone are muse three bringing creatures culled & teased from Mamara Sea

To entertain us, and cheer us with limerick, and spice us with nursery rhyme's archaic patterning 

Like an ocean shallow enough to dip the toes and to sample the warm warm water

As a body deep enough for where the wild things play leashed waiting to be unbound

Tis a place to test and stretch the edge of reason.