Monday, August 2, 2010

Word & Question

The following poemthingy was written, I'll admit quite late and rather hastily, for the Playing Poetry meme Word & Question, hosted at Shredded Cheddar. The first W&Q contribution can be found here.

You can find the rules for this meme at the links above.

The Word: Hippopotamus

The Question: Is it harder to find the answer or know the question?


A Buddhist would answer with the latter,
and would form it as another question,
for they like answering questions with questions
until there is no-mind and no-matter.

An Aristotelian westerner
would answer with the former; his answer,
being in the form of an answer,
would leave no doubt, that it shouldn't be a bother

what the question is, for the answer will extend
beyond the question posed, shedding light
in some respect upon a universal whole.
Thus one could well ask why God made the muddy
river's heaving hippopotamus;

the sage before whom the question was mused
ought not - if he were true - to refuse.

And the real credence came, to question and answer,
in which either led to a better
in the other: like man and woman together,
like bee and blossom in the spring;
this salvific dawn of ease of everything mattering;
a flowering back to us of everything-our-world;
this answer to the mind of man, that an answer
really could be an answer, and then the question honed,

no more the repeated ghost-drama of self-echoes,
being answered for real, as an actual answer -
perhaps more close and real than the pagan would expect -
was fruited forth (the seed of which
was a cataclysmic crucifix)
amid concerns of angel-fitting pins,
by a corpulent Dominican.

4 comments:

some guy on the street said...

I should say it was well done indeed. You've certainly more rhyme than I managed or dared. What a word to deal with, though --- hippopotamus, golly...

Has our friend E. seen it yet?

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

Your friend E is trying desperately to wrap her head around it before she even attempts to comment!

Paul Stilwell said...

Thank you Bat (is it still Bat?)! I actually had a feeling you might like this one.

Your comments E, early or late, are always welcome, whenever you feel like it.

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

Well, you already know that I'm incredibly impressed by what you did with "hippopotamus"!

I'll be back . . .