The Waters of Babylon

The Waters  of Babylon

Why, from the greatest pain, the sweetest music sounds?
It's in the soul's extremes the finest beauty's found.
The mother's tears, the widow's loss, the child's lament.
Have such intensity that only beauty gives a vent.
In oppressive nations the same truth is found.
The harshest gross injustice gives the sweetest sound.
Within the confines of the slave the blues spring forth
And from the tears of Erin haunting melodies have birth.
O Lord why must we weep before we make our song?
And why does beauty need a foil of such wrong?

Peter M. Grinham 5th June 2008

Publish in Island Inspirations 3
Copyright  Peter M. Grinham

Geese

Here is an experiment. A sonnet and free verse dealing with the same subject. I horrify myself by prefering the free verse

The Coming of the Geese 1

I walked beside the mud and salty marsh

And walking, heard a once forgotten sound;

The honking of the geese. Their tone's not harsh

For in their cries their unity is bound.

The gobbling stopped and from the marsh they rose

To make their vee shaped way across the sky.

And as a single soul their way they chose

For each needs each to gain its path on high.

Oh thank You God for geese that rise and call,

The birds that wheel in clear and clean fresh air.

This gift of grace comes with the threatening fall

When frosts prevail and flowers are rare.

It is these sights and sounds within creation

That gives my soul its source of great elation.

Peter M. Grinham 5^th March 2010

The Coming of the Geese 2

It was their calls that reached me first;

Phantasmal yet convivial honking.

They rose as one, yet one by one;

The gaggle now a skein.

Were they a single soul or many?

An alien could not tell.

But with no calculation or scientific operation

They rose a vee as flight demands

Above the glaucous, damp but fecund marshes

And as they rose they caused in me

A state of grateful exultation

For I am but a grub upon the horizontal marsh

Confined to simple observation.

Peter M. Grinham 5^th March 2010