How Did Poetry Begin? Poem by Raj Arumugam

how did it begin anyway
this love of sound and words and rhythm
and word painting?
did a bunch of perhaps thirteen men and women
gather one night
under the star-covered trees
and eat pizzas and say:
tonight we’ll not drink sake
or soma
and we’ll not have sex
or argue about swines and politics and metaphysics;
we’ll not drink wine or breathe in fumes
that make minds gallop like wild boars
but, tonight, we’ll drink words instead?