A Faith’s Pure Shrine

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

That rhyming verse which makes a big romance

Of stuff besmirches truest poetry.

It’s like Gestapo jackboots in a dance

On heaps of bones or like dacoity

Involving rape.  The memorizing of

Some verse that praises northern rock-bound coasts

And spreading of religion lacking love

Provides a case in point.  Such ringing boasts

Should not be taught to children in a world

Where Nagasaki horrors or the walls

Of concentration camps can be unfurled.

Atrocity of circumstances galls.

  New England coasts and rocks are covered with

    Coarse seaweed barnacles and Pilgrim myth.

~ Phillip Whidden