Even More Delightful Word Still

The master of amassing massive,

Convoluted sentences as plinths

Of marble paragraphs supporting

Charming little busts of fine persons

Who never drew breath except as such,

Thought the word, story, was delightful.

It’s like looking through a telescope,

Through a spyglass, wrongly, the great fires

Of tale-telling nights miniaturized,

So that the most supreme deity

Of human mind and society,

Story, appears porcelain-doll like, small,

Diminishing, far from his great lens

Of perfectly polished sentences.

Or maybe James was making a point,

Determined to fix story in place

So that the small features of persons

Could stabilize in the reader’s eyes.