Exigencies Of Rhyme Poem by gershon hepner

The exigencies of rhyme
caused Yeats to talk of muscatel
in “All Soul's Night, ” and I’m
a victim of its spurious spell
which many others break
like bowls where goldfish have to swim,
oblivious of those who take
but little notice of their whim
around, and round again,
to rush like rhymes that dance
on paper with a pen,
not victims of the laws of chance,
but of the rules that bind
the text like textile on a sheet
where words have been assigned
to greet the strangers that they meet.

Inspired by lines from 'All Soul's Night' which Paul Muldoon analyzes in 'The End of the Poem, ' suggesting that muscatel was introduced because of 'the exigencies of rhyme'. He also discusses the relationship of the words 'textual' and 'textile, ' conscious of the fact that they share the Latin root textere, 'to weave'.

1/3/07