RENUNCIATION
The Last Poet on Earth finished his swan song,
signed it with a sigh, sealed it with a tear,
and mailed it to the one who commissioned it.
Battered and beaten into chaotic meter and rhythm,
the poem was like a grotesque funeral song,
comedic in its gravitas and grave in its comedy.
The language was prosaic, the imagery dull and dense,
style stilted, and syntax convoluted.
The Last Poem done, the Last Poet on Earth
lay bare on the floor, stripping himself of
similes and metaphors, and allusions and elisions,
tormenting vowels, and torturous consonants.
He then gathered into his bag the letters of the alphabet,
commas, colons, dashes, quotes, periods, and parentheses.
Straight he went to the forest
where the Goddess of silence dwelt
with her left breast yielding words and phrases
and the right airing beats and melodies.
Hurling his bag at her feet, he yelled, rending the air:
“O, ye, Devi of silence!
Take this bag of blessing you bestowed on me
on the day of Dusshera to start me on this journey,
and give me your silence instead;
For I’ve been too much with myself and the world.
No more for me your words and noises;
Let me now bloom in silence.”
