Warren Pryor
rhythm – Try iambic heartbeat
When ev /ery pen / cil meant / a sac / rifice
every – ev’ry Shakespeare probably would have done that
his par / ents boar / ded him / at
a school / in town,
at a school – not quite right
slaving / to free / him from / the
sto / ny fields,
the mea / gre a/ creage / that bore / them down.
Underneath the words are the bones of the rhythm.
The rhythm is the skeleton that holds of the poem.
They blushed with pride when, at his graduation,
they watched him picking up the slender scroll,
his passport from the years of brutal toil
and lonely patience in a barren hole.
When he went in the Bank their cups ran over.
They marvelled how he wore a milk-white shirt
work days and jeans on Sundays. He was saved
from their thistle-strewn farm and its red dirt.
And he said nothing. Hard and serious
like a young bear inside his teller`s cage,
his axe-hewn hands upon the paper bills
aching with empty strength and throttled rage.
By Alden Nowlan
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