Vulgar Poet

Howard Winn

Words that offend the proprieties
bloom like skunk cabbages in Spring,
rank, obscenely suggestive of the coarse
in nearly human forms.
Ears that want to hear only decorum
cannot shut down the sound
and are offended at utterances
that seem solid things.
The poet indulges in the vulgar.
Why not notice the prettiness
of daffodils yellow in the fields?
Think about Wordsworth
looking out over lakes and fells,
a Rose Cottage retreat from industry
and the world of commerce,
where only sheep bleating disturbs
the Nineteenth Century.
Now tour buses blunder with brutish
Diesel thunder into the Twenty-First
and vulgar triumphs even here.
At the very least, skunk cabbage
in its ribald growth is guileless.