Sabi and “Kubla Khan”

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

“withered the health and the spirits of his bride” ~ Edgar Allen Poe, “The Oval Portrait”

The poet left his lines unfinished—and

Unfinished it became his perfect piece,

His greatest poem, Coleridge’s grand

Accomplishment.  In marbles ancient Greece

Betrothed to beauty and in bronze,

   Laomedon, Dying Warrior ~Wikicommons

Its artefacts now broken, ruined, lost

To everyday perfection.  For a bonze

Perfection of a broken sort brings glossed

Purport beyond the sculptor’s perfect aim.

Keats’ “Grecian Urn” resounds not least because

It punctuation makes its scholars claim

Depth due to ambiguity’s strict laws.

  An artist dies while painting.  His failed scene

    Is poignant like a death-bed doomed dauphine.

~ Phillip Whidden