Divine Design And Categories Poem by Ananta Madhavan

I was in London when the funeral Service
Was held for the King of Denmark at Westminster Abbey's
North Transept. I gazed upward to see the Apostles
Upholding a mighty Wheel, as if to contradict
Our incomprehension of the universe.
It was, perhaps a needed affirmation
Of divinely ordained pattern, misunderstood or disbelieved.

In art and poetry too, we invent a human order,
As perspective and shades of colour, fashioning
Lines and stanzas we can scan, prosody,
Sequences of rhyme, syllables and rhythm.

Ages pass by us. New scribes and bards
Warble in halting cadences of free verse,
As if to match their disjointed times,
Their tentative groping for a human patterning.