Does anyone care about poetry?

Does anyone care about poetry?

This was written as an answer to another blogger. Perhaps one should try writing poems, not writing about poems:
"The word 'encourage' is used in such modern sentences in the merely automatic sense of promote; to encourage poetry means merely to advance or assist poetry. But to encourage poetry means properly to put courage into poetry - a fine idea."
[GKC, ILN Sept 26, 1906 CW27:292]
So instead of writing about poetry, I wrote a poem to write about writing about poetry.
(Thank God I am a Chestertonian computer scientist, and can deal with such practical metaphysics...)

A blogger asks, "Do any care for rhyme?"
So I, who deal with words at work and play -
Computing cannot be a "Catholic" crime:
"According to Thy word" did Mary say,¹
"From 'yes' and 'no' your lips should never stray" ²
And Comp-sci Greeks now study liturgy³...
So armed with Word's own words I join the fray!
Does anyone care about poetry?

When "Phantom Tollbooth" Milo⁴ fought the grime
Of countless demons standing in his way
With Humbug and the Dog-Who-Watches-Time,
And so in darkness shone the Truthful ray:
He did not rescue "Prose and Feeling" - nay!
His diligence set Rhyme and Reason free...
Then Words and Numbers ⁵ ordered Wisdom's sway.⁶
Does anyone care about poetry?

Poems, just like numbers, might not be prime:
Words, declined to wed, will hide, fight, or slay;
But ah, what joy when perfect is the chime,
A fruitful tree ⁷ when words unite and stay...
As Dodgson watched the flight of his tea-tray⁸
A Real Romance ⁹ and not just Fantasy:
A song, a story, study, work and pray¹⁰...
Does anyone care about poetry?


Oh blogger, word-made-flesh¹¹, and living clay:
Move not thy mouse, press not that "Any" key!
My verbal wine foretells that coming Day¹²...
Does anyone care about poetry?


Made February 26, 2006.
=======================

OK, I overdid it again with the footnotes.

[1] Lk 1:38
[2] Mt 5:37
[3] The computer science course called "operating systems" is called "leitourgika" in Greece.
[4] See The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
[5] Azaz and the Mathemagician
[6] see Ws 11:21; cf. Science and Creation by S. L. Jaki, chapter 10.
[7] Mt 7:16-20
[8] See Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "A Mad Tea-Party"
"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!" ...
"Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky."
[9] "if there be indeed a God, his creation could hardly have reached any other culmination than this granting of a real romance to the world." [GK. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man CW2:380]
[10] cf. the Benedictine ora et labora
[11] cf. Jn 1:14, but note the lower-case; we are indeed flesh formed from the 3 billion-base "word" of DNA.
[12] see Jn 2:10; also cf. Rv 22:5 "and night shall be no more"