Verses that softer spring from their cottony chapter
spring, verse,
your tune's
train borne
by no retinue --
were your
echoes to
rest, your
face yards
dark, what
darker night
could Jove
throw?
unless diminishment, why,
echoes were copies ever
and unless diminishment,
echoes were mimicry ever
rhymed
satyrs
(& the
rest of
that in-
corporeal
inventory,
combines
of hominal
& else)
(tales of satyrs,
centaurs, sphinx,
mermaids & such
in verse, portraiture
out the poets' throats
racing verse's echo
with speech's echo)
put the brakes
(periodical,
periodical, until
this dawdle is
drawn to millennia)
on undiminished
animalistic
enterprise
in ladies &
gents, but
the birds
& beasts,
participants
likewise
in song
passing
from
throat
to throat,
what
verses
did they
swallow
to circ-
umvent
human
utterance?
—Jeff Harrison