The Modern PoetFor your words and others.
Release 15
Always tinkering.

I use this place too. I keep finding things to add, change, or make a little better.

Latest check: 1,242 passed. Regular checks, ongoing improvements.

This round: quieter reading, book-style chapters, and one HH throughout.

THE MODERN POET

The Coroners of Verse

By HH

The Owls of the Faculty gathered at noon, Beneath a respectable cardboard moon. Their collars were velvet, their scissors were bright; They’d captured a songbird and questioned its flight. “It rhymes!” cried the Dean. “And it sticks in your head! A carpenter sang it at work in his shed! If people can hear it and know what we mean, Then who needs a lecture? And who needs a Dean?” They plucked out the rhythm and snipped out the rhyme. They broke every beat till it limped out of time. They chopped a plain sentence and shuffled the stack, Then charged twenty dollars to put it all back. “Much better,” the Provost declared with delight. “I haven’t a clue, so it has to be right! The fewer who follow, the deeper it goes. Now fetch me a ribbon to pin on its toes.” They printed the pieces on paper so fine And toasted the wreck with a very old wine. “A triumph!” they hooted. “A bold new direction!” Then gave one another an award for dissection. The janitor stopped with his broom at the door. “I liked what the little bird sang here before.” “A common response,” said the Dean with a sneer. “You’ll need seven courses to learn how to hear.” But out past the ivy, beyond their debates, The starlings were singing on rusted farm gates. A child caught the rhythm. A farmer sang too. The song needed nothing the Owls could do. The Owls kept the bones in a box out of sight And polished their medals till late in the night. They guarded the cage. They collected their pay. Outside, all the singers kept singing away.

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