It Takes One
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
Henry David Thoreau writes of Chaucer, “We are tempted to say that his genius was feminine, not masculine. It was such feminineness, however, as is rarest to find in woman, though not the appreciation of it; perhaps it is not to be found at all in woman, but is only the feminine in man.”
As delicate as daisies on the green,
Perhaps, though they are sturdy steady flowers,
His femininity was like a clean
Spring day and seems much more like slender towers
In Tres Riches Heures illuminations. Life
That he reported was a rhyming thing,
A bit more delicate than what his Wife
Of Bath or what his Pardoner would sing.
We think of Bashô, samurai by birth,
Who then became a haiku master, first
Among these poets. Queenly in his worth,
His mind saw masculinity reversed.
..Thoreau himself was like an old maid, pure,
….Unwed and with desires he could not cure.