Our north-sea English needs no such ornament.
– Robinson Jeffers (“Rhythm and Rhyme”)
Yet even that abruptness has worn into Anglo-chants
hummed like radio jingles, empty slogans thumped
under breath as the blood pumps with daily survival,
a far hawk’s cry from the flint and club we took to bed
under the warm skins of animals that no longer rise
in our dreams—crude totems on sabbatical, released
from teaching ways to get along on earth. The pot
has melted now, reduced to new dialects, Everyman
has a pulpit in space above the crowd, another soapbox
in the wilds of our high-tech Hyde Park, another placard
to pack proclaiming God will pull the plug on us all,
soon—to free and cleanse us from our sinful natures.
Soft, homogenized in waves of rhyme and rhythm,
we follow the piper’s flute, await our promised morphine,
believe the clouds can hold our collected weight—
we have no north-sea English left, we speak in song.
drycrikjournal 