Poetry Month

[chomiji]

As I was browsing from LJ to LJ ... I found that it was poetry month (because cicer talked about it). Therefore - a poem!

For some reason this poem always strikes me as almost feverishly intelligent. It's a meta-poem - it's about the form of poem that it actually is: a sonnet.

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape
Flood, fire, and demon --- his adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Past are the hours, the years of our duress,
His arrogance, our awful servitude:
I have him. He is nothing more nor less
Than something simple not yet understood;
I shall not even force him to confess;
Or answer. I will only make him good.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I snarfed the text from The Wondering Minstrels, my favorite poetry site, which includes Tolkien along with the usual suspects.