Poetry is the First Pleasure

What is poetry?
Poetry is a whisper
The quiet voice of dreaming
That can never die

So long as civilization
Makes art, poetry spreads
Poetry is the eyes of things
In the soul of words

She is the ancients
Transcending time itself
Poetry is beauty
Unchanging unlike truth

A rhythm of sentience
On the face of rhyme
She is the admired song
Of the sweetest voice

She is the heaven-rapture
Dancing on the tip of bliss
What is poetry?
Poetry is of the wood

Poetry is the making
Of water and stone
She is the building of
Literacy in a world

Of discrete poems, where
We originate, create, evocatively
The poisis, the first-awakened
A realized feeling expressed

For all our eternities
So imagery, form, rhythm and sound
Might trumpet, flute and come
Alive in the music of our
Deepest lack of inhibitions.