Poetry

SOUTH SONG

by Walter Boswell
02/09/19
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South Song

With a voice like the whirlwind,

                shallow in draft,

                                yet long in capacity;

I could but listen

to her twinkling, tinkling ways

                balmly sailing, calmly wailing,

                sounding out her every depth.

Bred here of mellow manner

                                and foreign etiquette …

                no less an advertisement

for ringing places, some noted customs:

                                ‘Antebellum’

drawn out in Scarlet vowels,

speared with yamish flavor,

toasted like the South

                with deep-fried hospitality.

By Cause of Reason

Because there were no graves in Egypt,

have you taken us out to die in the wilderness?

Because you must not hold in faith

                what can in truth be contradicted;

because sleep lies within sleep,

because time is but a calibration of motion;

because that much is faulty.

Because someone else has something

                and nothing less than possession will satisfy;

because to want not is to have,

because to yield is to overcome;

because in flesh weak, in spirit willing ---

                while you are neither willing nor forbearing.

Because everything theoretical is heretical;

because the law does not fail

                because of one man’s transgression;

because religion is like the weather;

because it is only vanity …

because      it     is     a     trial,

and what if the sword condemn even the rod?

It shall be no more, says the Lord, it shall be no more.

Stationary

Words set upon a blue line;

                the hardship scratched in paper –

                hardened even more by the grief

                                of rhyme and reason.

The songs that I died for

can no longer linger in beat alone,

cannot weep to any measure without refrain.

Letters recalled from my youth –        left …

                to fading eyesight

       and the chronology of aging ink

to witness what stationery words remain

                                … entitled.

Dr. Walter Boswell

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