Last night I got to thinking about the loveliness of a seed, how it seems to be such a purely simple thing yet what intricacy sprouts from it and could I write a poem that's like a seed?
I thought of Audens Musee de Beaux Arts, a lovely poem and how shocked yet somehow pleased I was when I discovered (on my own) that he had plagiarized a piece of it from Ovid's Metamorphoses, an epic poem written over two-thousand years ago.
It's still a classic poem, simple yet complex in intonation, assembled from a lifetime of noticing. So, with Auden's help,
I wrote this tiny seed:
Who is it, standing by your elbow?
Close to you or far apart, is it anyone at all?
Perhaps you are alone.
Do not despair.
See that sprightly dancing monkey jiggling his little chain?
And how the strap beneath his chin keeps his tiny bellhop's cap
Perched at the perfect cocky angle?
Put a dollar in the monkey's cup
And listen to the organ grinder grind a merry tune.
Perhaps you are alone.
Open your heart, let the music in
And listen closely to the resonating strings.
You are not alone.
Have you ever known someone you loved who truly understood you?
Truly and deeply? The wheel turns, the monkey dances,
While the music plays.
You sense it but you cannot say it.
Listen closely to those resonating strings.
Perhaps you are alone.