Hypotheses were assumed,
proofs were furnished,
many old treatises consulted
and after a long dispute,
they arrived at the following
unanimously accepted definition:
POETRY is
A captive breath in a crystal phial,
A comet with hyperborean trajectory,
The herbarium concealed on Mars,
The secret language of autistic children,
A fine crushed Tanagra figurine,
The colophony ghost from old violins,
A white mole enamored into the light,
The cloud that inspired da Vinci,
A teardropp in which blue ships are sinking,
A monologue in a termitarium,
An ivory sphere with runic inscriptions,
An allegory scratched on the eye's angle,
A smile to lead us in a column,
The sadness that we must carry alone,
A collection of time consuming texts,
A prophet, sharing the forgetfulness herb,
A codifying machine with smudged keys,
Breathing through a writing pen,
The orchid, that the maskman dissects,
The fakir from the cow manure castle,
An ever asking, bodyless veil,
A shaky letter under the bengali fire,
A cactus that blooms once in a century,
The dream that we always forget,
A sleepy mountain lake nymph.
The delegated took a deep breath, relieved,
signed off and moved contented
and very slowly in the direction of
railway and bus stations, airports,
taxi stands, ferryports and balloons...
Fantastic idea for a poem and some of the most vivid imagery I've read in years. This is a definitely a poem to come back to, and read over and over.Loved it!
Some very refreshing images in this - a teardropp in which blue ships are sinking - nice!
I came here (by balloon!) expressly after reading Sherrie's comment on the Forum. Even though I want her to like MY poem best, this is both lovely and subtle. The narrative frames, though brief, are each delightfully addled AND express some real sense of poets and what a Poets' Congress might be like. Many of the images in the main section are wonderful, and I'm going to study the ones I don't 'get' immediately. I move we adopt this definition on Poemhunter!
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
A terrific catalogue poem, one of the best I've read. One thought- you might want to vary the A's and The's at the beginning of the verses to make it a bit tighter and the flow, the tinest bit smoother.