APOLOGY FOR VERSE
This poem is not only about poetry but, more specifically, why
poetry? We seem to live in a prosaic age where language is merely a
tool for the communication of abstract or practical concepts (or even
"information"). Poetry strives to use all the powers of
language- imagery, sound, rhythm and other aspects of form- to "say"
what cannot be "said", to communicate something beyond the
prosaic meaning of the words. The end of the poem refers to the
tradition of the cosmic creative "word" or in Greek
philosophy the divine "thought-word" or Logos of which the
power of human language is a tiny microcosmic reflection. This is
reflected in traditions as diverse as the Vedas, The Kabbalah, Odin's
receiving of the runes, the Ogham or magical tree alphabet of the
celts and of course the start of St John's gospel. However this is
not part of modern science so it can be regarded as a metaphor for
after all language is one of the things that makes our humanity (and
sometimes betrays it too).
Singing Bird, Don Hon-Oai, photographer.
APOLOGY FOR VERSE
"But why in verse?" I heard you say,
"Why not in prose: clear-stated ways,
Well-purposed to the common day?
Not fitted in a flowery phrase."
"Screens flash the data for our eyes.
The brain combines the senses' play:
The measured model of the real-
This figures what we use and feel."
And yet the word in rhythmic flow,
Alive upon the breathing line,
Is not a dead and formal sign:
A stone to mark grave thought's last glow.
Deep in the dark a star appears:
Deep in the heart's own hiddeness
Lives something prose cannot express;
Deep in the hidden leaves it hears
The singing of the secret bird;
From quintessential life it longs
To form a fleeting echo of
The shaping, singing, world-speaking Word.
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