What Understanding Does: a Pair of Sonnets
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
“Son of man, can these bones live?” ~ Ezekiel 37:3
When faith is in retreat, then scripture reads
More beautifully, poetically like red,
Like blood words Jesus speaks. Its meaning bleeds
To almost nothingness. It is a head,
This holy writ, a skull that does not rhyme
With heart. What’s left is criticism, dry
As ghostly skeletons in sand, a mime
For blind ones, blind birds snared that cannot fly.
Then when the explanations are complete,
The forcefulness of literature remains
As cool reverberations in retreat,
As echoes, ricochets, as blue-ish stains.
The Bibles, the Koran, the Vedas turn
To prettiness and then they cannot burn.
2/4 3/4 5/4 6/4 7/4 8/4 9/4 10/4 …
As Moondog aged, he turned to formal form.
Before that time he seemed to turn away
From nineteenth-century 4/4, all the norm
Of eighteenth-century stuff, and to the sway
Of random sounds, like foghorns, or like fangs
Of wolves devouring bones, scrapingly, munch
And grind in moonlight. Moondog loved the twangs
The city made. The El-trains gave a hunch
About direction for his music bars,
But, still, he found he had to go back to
A bit more rigid strength and not just jars
That noises made, and not just jazz-like blue
..Or ultra-violet composing from
….Experimental odd-shaped whacky drum.
