Another Tongue
If passion speaks beyond self-centered will,
if stones may cry aloud because a man
keeps silence, or if whispers wash the mind
as storms in springtime will refresh the earth,
then it is poetry that feeds our hearts.
At birth it is a soft caress that would
protect and nourish thought in gentleness,
to draw from deep within, a song that prose
could not express, a sigh devoid of art
that art alone may sing,
the singer but an instrument,
and that of conscious awe.
All this, and still demanding to be heard,
for if it were not so, we would not know
or speak of poets; wars might then
be just regretted or dismissed as lost
for lack of strategy; arms would
be taken up for power alone
and men would then survive
in shallow grief, insouciant within,
a tired state of lethargy, where no one
ever cares.
The powers of heavenly places may be thanked,
for muses dwell upon Olympus, not
within the hell of circumstance, or haste,
or juvenile romance--
for there is power indeed when insight travels
where the lofty giants led
and left upon their pages, majesty,
and bled, and wept, and gave us beauty
that device alone could only try to emulate,
and fade away.
~
Copyright © Robert Ludden | Year Posted 2012
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