I like to think of trilobites.
I like to think of all that time
Before pollution, war, or crime.
I like to think of trilobites.
Though man has reached such giddy heights
And scaled the lofty and sublime
I like to think, from time to time,
About the harmless trilobites.
A million billion days and nights
They trudged through their primeval clime
Happy with plankton, sun and slime.
I like to think of trilobites.
A hundred million gigabytes
Are not enough to pass the time
For primates in their mental prime.
I like to think of trilobites.
Though what I know of trilobites
Could be engraved upon a dime
I daydream of the good old time
When Earth was full of trilobites.
I have been trying very hard (and not hard enough, as you can see) not to comment every time you put up a poem; they certainly deserve a better commentary than just, "Hooray!" which is all the inspiration I can usually muster (a fault, not of the poems, but of my own lack of eloquence--usually, no doubt, sorely overtaxed by the burden of chiseling a text on my phone) But I have returned to read this one so many times now, that I can't help it. So: "Hooray!" It is amusing, but it's oddly soothing, as well, especially the notion of the strange little creatures "happy with plankton, sun and slime," which has such a comfortable cadence to it. I can rather see this one becoming one of the jumble I carry around in my head to lean on in the more tempestuous moments (they are rare, granted) at work.
ReplyDeleteI was talking to one of my relatives on Sunday and he brought up an interview in which he had heard a songwriter (I don't recall if a name was mentioned) speak of the importance of being humble enough to make one's ideas bow to the restraints of rhyme. It seemed a rather profound thought. Our conversation turned toward the modern proclivity of "expressing yourself," and the free verse used to do it. (I don't mean this as an out-and-out condemnation of free verse; I have indeed enjoyed some of it.) I may be both Philistinic and uncharitable in seeing nothing more than narcissism in a good deal of both modern poetry and songwriting--surely a fair modicum of the poet's experience has to seep through, if he is to be honest--but the idea that even inspiration should have the grace to bow to something higher, if only a hierarchy of rhyme, was fascinating to mull over.
Aw, thanks so much. I also find the atmosphere I was trying to evoke in the poem soothing-- I don't think any poem should be purely comic and without some effort to be at least a little moving in some way, so I'm glad you saw a little bit extra in it.
ReplyDeleteMy views when it comes to rhyme in poetry are exactly the same as yours. I never thought of the idea that submitting to the requirements of metre and rhyme as humility, but I see now that it is. Well, I just think that rhyme is actually more SPONTANEOUS, even, than free verse. Children singing or chanting or murmuring to themselves will naturally use rhyme and metre.
I was extremely anti-free-verse in my hot youth but I have become more tolerant in my mellow early middle age. In fact, quite recently- as a result of a dream, bizarrely-- I developed an urge to read a certain sort of free verse poetry and went hunting for it through the poetry shelves of my library. And I noticed a funny thing; free verse poets seldom quote EACH OTHER. When they want an epigraph to a poem, or a quotation to be inserted, it's usually from someone like Blake or Yeats or Larkin. Or it is from a popular song, or a ballad-- but it is pretty much always formal verse of one kind or another. I found that very telling!