What Rough Beast | Poem for May 25, 2017

right at the center, all sounds radiating outward from its core, the long vowel sound creating proud space for the architecture of the word. Tall and slender, lucid, perfect in its upright stance at the hub of all things. The word could not exist without the voweled sonic reach of the “I,” the remaining letters on their own would be just a damp puff crossing the lips with a “ftt!,” barely audible. Notice the letters relegated to the periphery, the “W” and the “E,” which could spell out the collective “WE” if they were not separated. These letters are complex, with angles and branches facing out in many different directions. The components of the “WE” are barricaded from the “I” by the henchmen letters “H” and “T,” erect and vigilant, vertical strokes protecting the “I,” with horizontal spacers to keep the outside world at bay. There is potential here; the “H” introduces a turbulence, a sense of living breath to the word, it could be moving into the profound question, “Why?” But the “T” cuts off that possibility by dropping its consonant chop; it could have created a “Whit,” an inconsequential trifle, were it not for the unappreciated labor of the trailing “E” straining to hoist the “I” skyward into all of its long-vowel glory. And the “I” just stands there, insulated from the tensions swirling all around it, blissful in its singularity. It does not feel alone, attended to by its acolytes, but it will never know the “WE” in all of our painful complexity, and we will never be able to reach through and disturb its safeguarded ego.