Too coy the haiku- Horatian the ode,

A villanelle reels- a limerick’s too light;

A little lugubrious, for me, the ballad,

Too desperate to soar the elegy’s height.

No, to page and poet, a prayer’s the sonnet-

Witness Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Petrarch-

An incensed chapel, pregnant silence on it,

Framing so aptly the clear Divine Spark

Of Spenser and Hopkins, Larkin and Donne,

Yeats, Heaney, Shelley, Frost, Keats and Gray,

Their temples high-built, sweet oratories sung.

So, for clarion truth and harmony pray,

Like Blessed Emily’s, both keen and strong,

In this “dark world and wide”, for a little song.

                                                                ~ Stephen Lang

                                                                  El Salvador