Language and Poetry: four Verse Essays by Gary Day

I  A History of Language in Nine Fragments

The first articulation created 
The possibility of silence, and broke 
Forever with earth’s natural music. 

Shapes on stone lightened 
Into letters that were yoked together 
And herded into books.  

Candle flames trembled 
At the Word of the Lord while saints 
Blazed in stained glass windows. 

An island people stood amazed 
At the strangely covered creatures 
Babbling and gesticulating on their shore. 

When the King lost his head, 
English turned artisan; plain 
And simple, like truth itself. 

Self is tangled in figures, metaphors  
And tropes. Each attempt to break free 
A new conceit, a deeper enmeshing.  

‘Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer!’ 
‘There is no “I” in team.’ 
‘Because you’re worth it.’ 

Thoughts are bytes, thinking is binary. 
The heart’s poetry only 
So much data. 

A wind once inspired flesh to speak in tongues. 
The dying down of a breeze is one 
Of the earliest meanings of silence.  

II  About Daffodils 

Daffodils used to be 
So well behaved, 
Knowing their place 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees; 
Yellow heads bent in deference 
To the stars’ greater fires; 
A fluttering host greeting 
The lonely poet floating 
Over hills and dales, 
Delighting him even 
As he lay pensive on his couch, 
Savouring the truths 
That come from solitude.   

The daffodils in my garden 
Are a right bunch, spilling 
Out like drunks from a bar, 
Blowing their trumpets and 
Shoving the snowdrops aside; 
Some sway unsteadily while 
Others fall flat on their faces. 
These guys don’t dance, much 
Less flutter, nor do they take 
Kindly to being stared at by poets. 
I hide behind the couch but 
Hear them shuffling closer; 
Their huge manes flaring. 

 III  A Poem’s Progress 

1. 

Stories tell of a poet 
Who never used the same word 
Twice. His poems grew shorter 
And shorter until, finally, 
There was just one word 
Left. Scholars disagree 
Whether it was ‘love’ or ‘me’. 
After that, there was only 
A great white silence 
Which readers had never heard 
So clearly before. 

2. 

Various drafts. Redacted.   

3. 

171,476
 

This is the story of Cybil, person 
Poetic, [also quite prophetic], 
Who successfully used 
Every word in dictionary just 
Once in her oeuvre. Result: 
Each poem slightly shorter 
Than last and increasingly 
Obscure too. Penultimate 
Creation ignited much excitement.
Indecipherable hieroglyph: 
Lots of squinting 
And head scratching 
And ‘I don’t knows’.   
Eggheads reasoned 
Peculiar sign could only be 
From O.E.D. Checked mark 
Against lexicon, but never
Found it. Went mad
Trying. Final work, blank sheet. 
Hailed as masterpiece. Seven 
Years later, uninscribed 
Cellulose pulp publicly burned. 
Ashes, like leaves, blurring 
Clarity of air. Lady with pen 
Never heard from again. 

IV  Poetry Course

The class gathers each week
To read the work
Of famous poets;
A tide of words to lift
The fleet of hearts.
‘Beautiful poetry’, sighs one,
‘Beautiful poetry.’

The tutor is impatient
With such facile emoting,
But hides it well.
‘Indeed it is’, he smiles
‘But poems must also be explained,
Their contexts, histories and
Hidden meanings revealed.’

Poetry is the perfect host,
Welcomes all her guests
The reverent, the romantic,
The rebel and the pedantic.
Her charm and grace and tact are such
That each one thinks they see her heart
When what they glimpse is but a part.

Whatever we say about it,
Poetry remains inviolable.
A serenity of being
Untroubled by our compulsion
To evaluate or explain;
An incarnation, perhaps,
Of what we most desire:
Redemption from being wrongly known.

V

This is a poem

Regard the buttercup:
At one end
A golden hat
To catch the sun’s
Cascade of coins;
At the other
White lightning
Trapped in the dark.
Between, a green tube
With a hair shirt.
Do you see
The flower now?
Of course not.
Look up.
Regard the buttercup.

(Note: ‘About Daffodils’ first appeared in ‘Autumn Makes Me’  Vole 271, September 2024.