Poetry: A Conversation

Poetry is anarchy,

Writing without rules.

Which of us thinks this may be?

None but bloody fools.

Is it not perverse (or worse?)

To throttle free expression?

Admonish not in terms so terse,

We jostle with shadows, illusions.

A poet’s mind, none may bind

With scansion, rhyme and metre.

Such are but tools, as you may find

In any craftsman’s atelier.

The words do dance as, in a trance,

Inspiration wells like happy tears.

Press not intellect into abeyance;

Calm thought suspended kindles fears.

You mock me here, so austere,

Oh flinty Wordsworth to my wan Keats.

You appear to be, apprentice seer,

Consummate acrobat of linguistic feats.

Poetry is incendiary;

To inflame the heart of man.

Liturgy, synergy, pathways to infinity,

Are the poet’s true domain.

Poetry is propinquity:

The queasy thrill of vaulting desire.

Kinder still is obliquity;

Truth in experience is ever mired.

Poetry is threnody;

Empathy, entropy: a cry wrung out of darkness.

Life is as the hand-wove Kashmiri;

God-wrought, flawed: extraordinariness.

Poetry is feeling, emotions reeling,

A divine charter warranting the senses.

Contemplation rather, inward-seeing;

The rendered world in contorting lenses.

Then how are we to ‘wrap’ this ‘rap’,

For conflict makes me weary?

We are the infant in Nature’s lap,

The innocent dream of the Apothecary.