Allusions

“We love because it’s the only true adventure.”
– Nikki Giovanni

So often they are bad news bards°
saying things like believe him
when he shows you who he is^*
and the gods punish us best
by answering our prayers.^**

Time is a fowl above all the brilliance
laying on the lawn; and time and splendor
cares not a whit for us,^*** leaving in their wake
our once-in-a-lifetime, misspent youth,^****
umpteen dreams deferred and might have beens,^†
loudly tolling bells for everyone carrying their multitudes.^††

A ballad is a song is a poem is a song^†††
and we sang with a song that was more than song.^††††

But then they also gave us negative capability^β
and antiphrasis: poetry making everything happen,^ββ
truth and beauty,^β hope on feathers,^βββ infinity
in a grain of sand^ββββ and a new year full of things
that are yet to be^¶…advisories to fight all the dying,^¶¶
to just do it^¶¶¶ and specific instructions
on the best way forth,^※ energy to run on,
to heed, to heart, to annotate, to consider:

I am breathing;^※※ walk softly across my dreams.^※※※

° Bad News Bears * Maya Angelou ** Oscar Wilde *** Virgil, William Wordsworth and Geoffrey Chaucer **** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  † Langston Hughes and John Greenleaf Whittier †† John Donne and Walt Whitman ††† Gertrude Stein already alluding to William Shakespeare †††† Edgar Allan Poe β John Keats β β W. H. Auden β β β Emily Dickinson  β β β β William Blake ¶ Rainer Maria Rilke ¶¶ Dylan Thomas ¶¶¶ Horace via Nike™ ※ Robert Frost ※※ Sylvia Plath ※※※ William Butler Yeats

From The Writer’s Guide to Common Grammar