Remember when great poets of the day
delight in writing words that rhyme with gay
was done with gay abandon, as they would say;
dead Wordsworth would turn over in dismay
at diction’s sad decadence and decay
if he knew the meaning of the word today.
It’s true there were more than a few among
poets of the past whose sonnet and song,
the Spear included, were oft suspected
to be dedicated to limp-wristed
affairs which most men would consider wrong
and which even today seem to abound.
Robin Hood and his merry men in tights,
those who feasted on festive Sherwood nights,
with no maid except Marianne in their sights,
on poached game and other sundry delights
looted from the Sheriff’s men in many fights;
would they have fought today, fought for gay rights?
Today the word gaiety is okay
but make no mention, whether jest or play,
in serious prose or light-hearted poetry
of that sad word of shame lest straightaway
by rumourmonger malice one fall prey
to suspicion or be branded that way.
Copyright ©2001 by G. Newton V. Chance
- G. NEWTON V. CHANCE
- George Newton Vivian Chance (Trinidad and Tobago) -- member of the Poet Society of Trinidad and Tobago, http://poetssocietytt.blogspot.com/ and the World Poets Society, http://world-poets.blogspot.com/ -- born in Tobago on 3rd March 1957. While residing at Rio Claro was inspired to write over a hundred poems at the turn of the Millennium. Hobbies include playing wind instruments, building computers, observing nature, reading and writing poetry. Believes that the power of a song is in its ability to evoke emotions by the marriage of lyric and music but that music without lyric can be just as powerful, that lyric without music can also be just as powerful, that there is music in the lyric and that lyric can be simple yet profound. Also, in this the age of computers, would like to model his lines after simple and efficient code and, analogous to Object Oriented Programming, achieve most of his imagery from nouns and verbs, avoiding the bloat and excess of unnecessary adjectives. This is what he aspires to attain in his poetry.
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