BOUND VERSE III

                    Why did the classic poets all confine
                    Themselves to rhyme and meter, line by line,                    
                     Whereas today the manner’s to be free                    
                    Of such restraints, now thought absurdity?                     
                    What “free-verse” poets do not understand                   
                    Is how exigencies one never planned                     
                    Provoke spontaneously new lines of thought                    
                    Revealing what one didn’t know one sought.                     
                    Relinquishing the motive of control                     
                    Aimed at some set premeditated goal—                    
                    But rather open to the vagaries                    
                    Of mind, compelled by the exigencies                    
                    Of rhyme, one finds an unexpected place                     
                    By what, when fortunately blessed, seems grace.

*