Check Back in a Few Ages

So one poet wrote a blurb

For another poet’s book,

Stating the poems in it were

Written to reverberate

Through the ages—the ages!

And you think about that phrase,

Working to recall the poems

One could say have already

Reverberated ages—

Psalms, epics, shi, villanelles,

Gathas, haiku, what have you—

And from their famous contents,

You’d have to say, yes, many

Asserted they were written

For the ages. Not a few

Boasted quite explicitly

Of becoming immortal—

Whitman’s free verse and Shakespeare’s

Sonnets, we’re looking at you.

Then again, it’s worth noting,

Many non-reverberant

Poems were every bit as much

Written to reverberate

But didn’t. Maybe the blurb

Was slyer, more backhanded

Than its grandiosity

Suggests. Like so many poems,

Most of them long forgotten,

Gathering dust, all those bells

Cast in various sizes

Meant to ring that ring no more,

Like those, these poems were bravely

Written to reverberate.