I am: I am horribly---HORRIBLY---embarrassed that I failed to acknowledge this comment in a timely manner. Thank you very much for commenting, and please forgive my incompetence in keeping up. And yes, when I was writing it, I could hear the humming and chanting as well. I have loved the film, The Egyptian (1954) and Mika Waltari's novel of the same name that inspired it, since my viewing of it on the Sunday of our Memorial Day holiday in 1974 (while eating my father's rotiserrie chicken---it doesn't get better than that). As I have grown older, I have become particularly impressed, even emotional, about, the film's musical setting of what, I suppose, is the movie's version of the Pharaoh Akhenaten's Hymn To Aten---which, in the film, we hear beginning with the words, "How beautiful art thou . . ." (although they do not appear in the translation I have read of the actual ancient poem, and I am not sufficiently a scholar to know the difference). But the beauty of that music is, to me, ancient Egypt.
Thanks again for the comment, and please forgive my inexcusable incompetence in failing to reply timely.
Awkward and clumsy? I: Awkward and clumsy? I disagree. It may have seemed so in the writing, but the result, and the effect of reading it, is far different. This poem reads like a glimpse of the stream of consciousness---which, in my opinion, is more difficult than the usual approach (I cannot imagine how James Joyce wrote, and wrote so well, Molly's great soliloquy at the end of Ulysses). The awkward and clumsy that you may have felt while writing it do not cross over into the reading of it.
There is something so: There is something so nostalgic, enchanting and charming about this delightful flood of pure gratitude for the things that matter most. The world seen through the eyes of a child is suddenly so clear. Heartwarming and inspiring work.
Thank you, and you need never: Thank you, and you need never apologize to me for any comment; and a Poet of your calibre will never ruffle these feathers. Your comments have extended my understanding of the issue, and for that I am grateful.
Most kindly so. And that: Most kindly so. And that comment was only to validate both, whereas without what's been referred to as the great heretics (a word I don't particularly rejoice in, mind: heresy) the world would not have evolved or advanced ( another 2 words that have turned into triggers ). And that is the challenge, how to uphold and cherish one without dishonouring or missing out on the possibilities and potential pleasure of the other. On the street we can witness an anology of this, albeit an insufficient one: automobiles running alongside each other on the same thoroughfare but having left or right hand steering; different bodies with the same engines, and strikingly similar ones with different engines under the bonnet. In saying so, this is to lay it out there without motivation to persuade or dissuade but to acknowledge the variations and the validities of all based on their individual merits and distinctions. Apologies if expression could ruffle feathers, so to speak.
Thank you very much. You: Thank you very much. You know---I most dearly hope you know---that I have the utmost respect for your poetry, and your comments; and I respect this comment no less. I think, however, that the respect for the formal rules of certain forms (sonnets, Haiku and Tanka, blank verse as iambic pentameter) is too much ingrained in the very fabric of my soul to become comfortable with variations on those rules. Some time ago, I read a very intensely moving, unrhymed poem of thirteen lines; and in the notes to the poem, the Poet called it a sonnet (and I cringed). Formalism was part of my literary upbringing: such that, immediately after my undergrad years, I found Eliot's free verse (even in the Quartets, and especially in the plays) inferior to Wallace Stevens' more regular iambic pentameter. Most likely this preference for the formal rules makes me a fossil, but, after all, fossils are sought by collectors and can remind us of the ancient, even mysterious, past.
Thank you for the comment; I am always grateful for your words.
The sublime terror and: The sublime terror and anticipation! That 50/50 chance of it going either way, nothing like that swell at landings, entrances, vestibules, doorways and archways and doorsteps.
Decanted is one of those: Decanted is one of those magical words and not just for bibbing. A blessed thanksgiving and gratitude all around; and to poets both present, past and emerging.