AFTER ALL
    
We are now witnessing a spectacle which is truly extraordinary, unique in the history of poetry: every poet is going off by himself with his own flute, and playing the songs he pleases. For the first time since the beginning of poetry, poets have stopped singing bass.

                                —Mallarmé, 1891:

     Though, after all, we reach out, from a place
     alive with birdsong, whispering of trees,
     the wild obsessive buzzing of the bees
     and all of Nature’s calm relentless grace,
     to hold a hand, to touch a human face
     and listen well for heartbeats on the breeze,
     to speak with all the clarity we please
     and hear the flute, the throbbing of the bass.

     There’s something in the spirit that denies
     the stark cacophony that I recall.
     Let’s slow it down before the sparkle dies,
     and hope, if we’re attentive when we call,
     the soft and rhythmic human voice replies —
     The joy is in the singing, after all.

Robert B. Cumming, 2005