Noah's Poems

Pray what rhythms and what rhymes
Beguiled you in your ancient times
Noah, how many poems do you see
In your blue-washed world so free?

Then from his realm of fantasy
From his world of words spake he:

'One, upon the watery sky
Towering there like Sinai
And of that island place I know
The olive groves do grow and grow
Two-by-two, symmetrical
So sings the dove that doth fly free
Upon my decks to thus make three.'

And as I pondered on and on
Strange wisdom sung like Solomon
Noah spoke again to me
Aboard his ship of fantasy:

'For forty days my matchstick boat
Did in a crystal bottle float
But waters wax and waters wane
And after forty nights of rain
A thousand tops do show again
One by one, washed pure of shame -
Myriads of magic peaks
Some with names to strange to speak.'

And as I pondered on and on
Such wisdom sung like Solomon
I dreamed I drifted on that boat
Within that world of words to float.