XVII

Don July 8th, 2008

XVII 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.”

A writer who was and continues to be extremely important to me is C. S. Lewis. I was moved to write this poem for him on hearing W. H. Auden do his elegy for William Butler Yeats at a public reading at Ball State University. The form is that of the irregular ode again. I would like to think my first live exposure to a truly good poet occasioned a jump in artistic maturity as well as motivation.

TO C. S. LEWIS

On the not long past, convulsive day That Kennedy bled and died.

One far greater went away And we noted not his passing,

But in other worlds they cried

For Joy and grief, and knew that he was gone.

Eerie voices, speaking late that night

In dusky Stonehenge, shrouded in the gloom,

Whispered to the stones that he had gone.

The beavers and the conies passed the word

Excitedly from lip to beastly lip,

And crickets on that night, and all the birds

Were hushed because they knew that he was gone.

A tall sorn standing all alone

Gazing on a distant speck of light,

Procession of singing hrossa in the night,

Pfiffltrig slowly shaping brittle stone,

Fell silent and stood still like graven stone

And were saddened, for they knew that he had gone

And gladdened, for they knew that he was Home.

A faun with an umbrella stopped to sniff the air;

Man-odor there;

But strangely changed.

And Aslan’s roar of Joy bounced off the cliffs,

For Aslan knew,

And Aslan called his name,

And so he came

With clear grey eyes and did not turn away

But strode with steady foot from night to day

And bowed, and Aslan smiled as if to say,

“Well done.”

                                                                                                                                              Donald T. Williams, PhD

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