Variations on a Viol

      The builder of cellos in solar weather 
      Extracts a suavity from knots, true trills 
      That mock the swilling catbird in his royal chair. 
      But from what seed increased the pilfered wood? 
5     Farm boys and their milky maids grown old 
      Must, as hale timbers rudely weathered, 
      Must strain, and crack, and, in their scale, break 
      Remoter love's fiercest chord, dwindling 
      At length as even the grandest cock 
10    Goes rolling, listlessly, on to noon. 
       
      II 
      Blue rabbis without hats are chasing still 
      What rabbis, bending at their lamps, construe 
15    To be the bright perennial, in renewing hues 
      Emerging, out of so much ephemeral dust. 
      Hearers of thunder in their flamenco capes 
      Make much of its minor terrors and mimic hate; 
      Dividing time between one disaster 
20    And another catastrophe, that kills, 
      They are like drowned rabbis beholding doom 
      In a stoven ship of their own imagining 
      While blazing fish peek about their bones.

 

From the collection "Constellations in December"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.