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In Praise of Difficult PoetryThe much-maligned art.

By Robert Pinsky
Posted Monday, April 23, 2007, at 10:56 AM ET

(Continued from page 3)

THE PHOENIX AND THE TURTLE

Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,

To whose sound chaste wings obey.
But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer of the fiend,

Augur of the fever's end,
To this troupe come thou not near!
From this session interdict

Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,

Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender makest

With the breath thou givest and takest,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence:

Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.

So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:

Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen

'Twixt the turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.
So between them love did shine,

That the turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix' sight;
Either was the other's mine.

Property was thus appalled,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name

Neither two nor one was called.
Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together,

To themselves yet either neither,
Simple were so well compounded,
That it cried, How true a twain

Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none,
If what parts can so remain.

Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supremes and stars of love,
As chorus to their tragic scene.

THRENOS

Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed, in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix' nest
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be:
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

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Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's latest book of poems is Jersey Rain.
"Michaelangelo: To Giovanni da Pistoia …" from Zeppo's First Wife by Gail Mazur © 2005; reproduced courtesy Gail Mazur and Chicago University Press. "You Were Wearing" from Thank You, and Other Poems by Kenneth Koch © 1962, renewed 1990; reproduced courtesy Kenneth Koch Literary Estate and Alred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc. "Nick and the Candlestick" from Ariel, by Sylvia Plath © 1966 by Ted Hughes; reproduced by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, and Faber & Faber, London. "Poetry Is a Destructive Force" from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens © 1954 by Wallace Stevens, renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens; used by permission of Alred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., New York, and Pollinger Limited, London.
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