"The world goes on despite us and our poems."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notwithstanding

 by Catherine Chandler

“The world goes on despite us and our poems.”

                ― David Mason (from his poem “Winter 1963”)

 

 

Keyboard strokes replace the fountain pen

and voices yield to verses on the page―

so have the poets sung from age to age

devoted to their vital art. 

                                                         But when

the audience for truth and beauty fades,

replaced by fandom of a looser form

whose stale epiphanies become the norm;

and AI scatters reams of ready-mades;

when deconstruction proves it vain to find

meaning; when an old philosophy

conjectures on the use of poetry

as pure abstraction of an idle mind,

I offer up a faithful antiphon

although the world goes on. And on. And on.

 

 

 

 [First published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, September 2024]

An April Poem: Setback

 

 

 

 

Setback

by Catherine Chandler

I’d seen a robin, days were getting mild,
the crocuses were up, and I could hear
the wild geese honking on the pond. Beguiled,
I’d set the garden chairs in place, in sheer
delight. The northern winter-spring transition
is never easy, but I’d hoped this year —
with father’s cancer gone into remission —
that April would be kind. Then we had snow
this afternoon, a boreal admonition:
Not so fast. Not so
fast.
                    Oh, to be the quiet sort
who bow their heads, accept the status quo,
conceding there’s a God, and we’re his sport,
that winter is so long, and life so short. 

 

 

 

[First published in 14 by 14, Issue 4, June 2008]