XVI
Don July 7th, 2008
XVI Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.” I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”
I’ve skipped a number of poems that were too long to fit into a blog, too juvenile for me to bear to include them, or simply had nothing to contribute to the theme of what I’ve learned from trying to be a poet. And so we come to 1970-71, my sophomore year at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, and to various other poems that deserve to be skipped for various reasons. And then we come to a more ambitious experiment with form, which can be achieved not only by various ways of exploiting meter and rhyme, but also by other kinds of parallelism.
CONSUMMATION
a broken figure a kingly Figure
scrawls obscenities carves his Name
on a blackened sun, and his in the heavens and the
hollow laughter is swallowed planets bow in
by the void reverent silence
a burnt-our figure a majestic Figure
spits at the foot sits on the right
of a throne, and his of the throne, and his
spittle falls and dries glance is like the piercing
on his chin of a sword
a shrouded figure a shining Figure
crawls through the ashes stands amid a crown
of the universe, and his of flaming stars, and his
funeral wail is swallowed cry of triumph resounds
by the void from the ends of infinity
a quenched, spent figure a tall, royal figure
falls ever in the void, receiving the worship
followed by the millions of the universe, sheds a bitter
who have spent their lives tear for those whose knees
to buy his image are bowed by force
amen . . .
amen.
Donald T. Williams, PhD
- Poetry
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