Two Sides of One Channel, Sea, or Ocean
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
A strand, another strand, two banks of one
Wide river separate — but offer more.
Exotic poetry entails a sun
Unseen until the poems reach the foreign shore
Across the currents of division. Then
The poets there, beyond the parting stretch,
Receive seductive lines, the sort that men
Adore, like lines that temple dancers sketch
With jewelled hands. Interpreted old tales
And tongues from unknown cultures, then, transformed
Fetch thrilling nuances. These filled the sails
That made the crossing with the winds that warmed
Those distant poets first and now at last
Both parts of the equation glow more vast.