Chanticleer's Complaint Poem by William F Dougherty
Chanticleer's Complaint
Why do these odes make such a dainty choice,
'Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird, '
of metaphors in measure? The human voice
favors—so to sing—feathers made-to-word
to lift such lilting melodies through time
in delicate woodnotes, fluent and flush,
chirping like warblers in full-throated rhyme:
skylarks, nightingales and darkling thrush.
Skylarks, my coxcomb! Why must songs ignore
my blazing bursts? Who crows the nights to day,
rousing the sun, from top the hen-house door?
If falsetto poets spend no ink to praise
how brilliantly chanticleer ignites the dawn,
I'll lift my neck one day and merely yawn.
Poems about the fable of Chanticleer date back to Chaucer. Illusion of self-importance is timeless.
And then you'll see, Sun rise is dependent on - Me! As hours of dark continues to rule You and yours will struggle off to work and school Without a glimmer of hope For without me, life is a joke. But, I can't let you experience such a dismal fate So back to the hen-house door, I'll fly and wait For the minutes just before day break And proclaim, it's time for all to be awake. Sign me chanticleer, alias, s
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4/26/2024 10:41:56 AM # 1.0.0.1119
The reader misses the irony of Chanticleer's sonnet of complaint so completely he can't see or understand that Chanticleer (a rooster) is making the same point that Donald Duck is making about all the glory going to odes to sweet-sounding birds- Ode to a Skylark, Nightingale, etc. world-famous poems by the Romantics (Keats/Shelley) , which anyone aquainted with poetry (as Cummings deeply was) would recognize. But the rooster and the duck cannot sing a duet because one of them confuses free verse with non-verse. # next to of course god ameria i # pity this busy monster, manunkind are rhymed sonnets by Cummings, as any rooster or duck could figure out-but not the cawing crow.