Sweetness on the Desert Air
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
If you retreated to provincial Kent,
Were banished there from London’s buzz to rot
Among the hops and bees where things are meant
To be mere fields and slopes, would you just clot
Up in your feelings and your mind? Would loss
Of friends you left behind, career, and pad
Above the bustle of the capital, its sauce
And meatiness, result in only bad?
Well, not if you decide that now’s the time
To change the course of poetry. If you
Are Chaucer or a Wordsworth, you will chime
Out people’s English into something new.
..In vulgar voices you create, you tell
….Rude tales and make a spring-like beauty swell.