Well Versed

Some days I go about London
in a prosodic trance,
not listening to the meanings
of what people are saying,
just to the sounds and rhythms of their speech.

Oh! what bliss: 's' is a groovy fricative,
and that builder just called to his mate
in trochaic tetrameter catalectic,
might have said:
'Pass the bucket will you now,'
but I wasn't paying attention.

Now comes a true tetrameter,
the full eight syllables, perhaps it was:
'Got a tenner on the favourite.'

Later I remember
today is the Cheltenham Cup.

Subliminally I must have absorbed
more than his prosody. Oh! builder,
in your jaunty yellow hard hat,
balancing so graceful along that plank,
who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake,
when 'thou thy worldly task hast done'
(trochaic tetrameter catalectic - Cymbeline),
did you knock off early
to watch the race in the pub
with your companions? I never checked
whether the favourite came in first.

I hope it did and won you a few quid.

That concentrated focus on prosody
brings moments of sheer heaven
but if I did it all the time
(some people think I do it quite enough),
without being anywhere aware
that that's not all that's going on,
I would be barmy.

Likewise you reductionist postmodernist,
who say there's nothing but language
or brain scientist interested only
in the brain's activities, yes, everything
can be considered under that one aspect,
for yes, that's your professional delight
(oh no, not here we go again:
that was an iambic pentameter),
maybe even necessary to do your job -
you too must have your wits about you
not to fall off your plank -
but if either of you seriously avers
that's ever all there is,
if the one discounts the mortal body
or the other ignores love and poetry,
isn't that blinkered vision also daft?

About the Poet

Focus is from Dinah Livingstone's new poetry collection Kindness (Katabasis, London 2007). If people want to catch her read, she is taking part in a commemoration reading for John Heath-Stubbs at St Matthew Church, 29 St Petersburg Place, London W2 from 7pm on Friday February 29.

John Rety of Hearing Eye Press and Torriano Meeting House is a former editor of anarchist paper Freedom.