New Exercise/Response Poem2

Beat writers' block here.
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Antcliff
Perspicacious Poster
Perspicacious Poster
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Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2011 1:35 am
Location: At the end of stanza 3

Tue Sep 13, 2016 8:02 pm

Take a poem you like....by another person. Ideally, one available on-line.

Read it again.

Write a poem that is a response to it.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
Richard Wilbur
Leaf

Sun Jul 21, 2019 6:30 pm

Hey, this is cool 8)

Poem
‘The Poplar-Field’ by William Cowper, https://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Cowper/the_poplar-field.htm, with thanks to mac :)

Research
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-cowper

Note
This is intended as a comforting ditty, performed as a song in triple metre :>)


The blackbird's ditty

Thus poor Cowper laments, then rolls off the said seat
and curls up on the field, which was once used for wheat,
in an oval of shade –- for some shade does remain
by each tree stump, yet musings arising from pain

steal the shade and all comforts away and away
and felled poplars bring thinking of death and decay
'til, exhausted, the poet slides into a dream
and the blackbird calls, 'Cowper, m'duck?', from upstream.

'Aye, 'tis dam' shame these very fine trees were axed down.
I stood watchin'. Well, you can imagine the frown
that I wore. As for Missus, she wept, just like you.
But we 'ad to move on. There was so much to do!

'Our dear 'ome lay in clumps on the grass, eggs all spilled.
So we 'ad to find other trees where we could build.
Now we live in the 'azels. They're just 'round the bend.
And you're welcome to visit us, Cowper, old friend.

'It is not your grand colonnade. Still, 'tis quite good.
You can muse in the shade of the bendy brown wood.
And the Ouse runs as smoothly as ever you viewed.
And we've just started raisin' our next little brood.'
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