No Infrared or Seismic Communication

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

“The magnificence of Man, the sublimity of Nature, are seen as they really are, one thing.” ~ R. H. Blyth,  Haiku, Summer-Autumn (volume 3), 278

The elephants move round and round, caress

The bones, the brother or the sister brought

To death, but now dried bones.  Beasts do not guess.

They know.  They know the smell and shape, not taught

But known.  They know the shape of grief.  They know

The form of death.  They know the sorrow of

The meaning, meanings, meaningless’s glow

If white of  bones, the meanings of lost love.

Achilles mourns the meaning of his man,

That man he loved and loved, that one dead friend —

Patroklus . . . only . . . man:  in that one span

The godlike, full of powers lacking end.

  Magnificence reduced in all to one,

     Eclipsed is cosmos, blackened, blacked out sun.

©  Phillip Whidden