Tag Archives: quintilla

Herding Cats: a gloss as a quintilla

The poets speak of love, and some
in tangled words seem lost and mired;
for each one that is awestruck dumb
or struggles when the words won’t come,
a dozen more seem uninspired,

and speak of passion secondhand
as if its pull they could resist
while calmly, at their whim’s command,
the muses at their elbow stand,
soft fingers guiding pen and wrist.

It does not work that way all.
To write of love, it must be past;
transcription of its plaintive call
in real-time, as the storm in squall
persists, and the clouds of its vast

expanse encompass every hour
spent dreaming, in long nights awake,
is beyond our feeble power;
better to describe a flower
in that brief span its life makes,

relying not on former blooms,
but in that moment, seeing clear.
The dry words dug from memory’s rooms
cannot suffice; they but entomb
its beauty in a gauze of sheer

invention, and show not the rose.
And so it is with love that lives;
To name it while its blossom shows
is to disrupt the stream that flows.
Thus dammed, just rivulets survive.

Yet those small trickles poets use
to describe, entire, the ocean;
and in their vanity, refuse
to wonder if the words they choose
outlining their heart’s devotion

Can possibly, in truth, report
all that is love. The wisest few
admit their failings, and resort
to politics and other sports;
that, rather than painting the dew.

16 APR 2004

Love looks not with the eyes, but
with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid
painted blind.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), A Midsummer Nights Dream (1595-6)

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Homestead Elegy: a quintilla

A quarter mile back down the lane
paved with loose stone and bits of brick,
past three tall trees that still remain
after ten years almost the same,
though at their bases weeds grow thick,

a wood frame house, its paint in peel
and tin roof rusted rough and brown
still stands, though some would say it kneels
between the overgrown bean fields
and waits for time to knock it down.

The circle drive, worn deep with holes
from tractor wheels and rude snow plows,
runs from the lane to the light pole,
its path no longer clear and whole –
just where it leads, no one knows now.

Beyond the house, down the back hill
through waist-high weeds and long cat-tails.
a drainage culvert runs; it fills
to form a moat, brackish and chilled,
when the snow melts, and spring storms hail.

Before, this place was live and hale,
a stand against the world untamed –
its yards well-tended, hay grass baled;
was not the farm, but farmers failed,
and left the land to take the blame.

Now later, its old bones lay bare,
the marrow dried to dust and stain;
gone too, those who could point to where
among the wild weeds it sleeps there
a quarter mile back down the lane.

revised 26 APR 2004

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