Thursday, March 13, 2014

Meditations in Fast Times: 7. Words are a music that should really be just words


                 7.

Words are a music that should really be just words,
quothe the conflicted scribe.

Could words mean so much,
if there were nothing poetical about them?

Words, naked against the silence,
cannot be so transparent,
or what is the point (still or trembling)?

My heart overflows with the songs
I have learned from birds;
they sing to announce their rights—
all tongues must be skilled pens,
each a sword to defend justice and truth,
pointed and crafted, learned and remembered
—as well as to celebrate the communion of sunlit joys.

Along the way and wave,
words are like the intentions we pave—
for what poetry does not its people save?
— and each step we take
is eased by the music we make;
words must intend, when addressed,
to soothe the savage and his aching breast,
to be medicine that smoothes each crease,
to be the incantation announcing peace.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen