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

It is as if a lark dislikes the joys

Of singing, or as if a hawk held hate

Of soaring in her heart, or if the noise

Of daughters playing felt like heavy weight

To parent.  It is as if the honeybee

Resents her roaming over flowers and fields,

As if a desert blooming sunny tree

Would shrug off rain, or if a meadow yields

No clover, or refuses pasture for

The gentle mothers with their calves; or then

Perhaps if novice nuns prayed sometimes more

For hearts’ temptations proffered by pronged men.

  It is as if a frog on awkward land

    Held back from leaping from the pond’s dry strand.