Greetings to All Poets gathered here on this first day of June. Depending on which hemisphere you live in, the beginning of June is leading into warmer weather or cooler weather. Luckily the chosen word doesn’t care what the temperature is. Or does it?

I’m Lisa (at https://tao-talk.com,) hosting today’s Quadrille Monday. It’s a pleasure to be back after a month-long blogcation. I will do my best to entice your muse to dance along to the prompt. For those new to dVerse Poets Pub or to the quadrille form, it is a 44-word poem written using a word that the host gives you. The title may give you a clue as to the word: horn. Please note that you may use any of the variations the word may take. Whether you want to make music or horn in on a conversation; whether this time of year makes you horny, or you want to rub velvet off of them; whether hawthorns are in bloom, or thorns catch at your clothing on a walk down the path; whether your inkhorn needs filling, or your shaggy mane needs to be shorn, this word is for you.

I was surprised at how many poems there are using horns.  The first one, by Ghana-born, Jamaican-raised poet Kwame Dawes, both mesmerizes and chills me.  It taps into beyond six senses and into something primordial.  Looking into the subject a little, it seems like he is talking about duppies, Jamaican spirits that can work for good or ill.

Horns
By Kwame Dawes
In every crowd, there is the one
with horns, casually moving through
the bodies as if this is the living

room of a creature with horns,
a long cloak and the song of tongues
on the lips of the body. To see

the horns, one’s heart rate must
reach one hundred and seventy
five beats per minute, at a rate

faster than the blink of an eye,
for the body with horns lives
in the space between the blink

and light — slow down the blink
and somewhere in the white space
between sight and sightlessness

is twilight, and in that place,
that gap, the stop-time, the horn-
headed creatures appear,

spinning, dancing, strolling
through the crowd; and in the
fever of revelation, you will

understand why the shaman
is filled with the hubris
of creation, why the healer

forgets herself and feels like
angels about to take flight.
My head throbs under

the mosquito mesh, the drums
do not stop through the night,
the one with horns feeds

me sour porridge and nuts
and sways, Welcome, welcome.

Colorado College teacher and former Colorado Poet Laureate, David Mason’s murky look at “the loneliest days” is not a poem I would choose to share in mid-winter.  Now it can be safely teased apart.  The second stanza is one I revisit and ponder.


Fog Horns
By David Mason

The loneliest days,   
damp and indistinct,   
sea and land a haze.   
   
And purple fog horns   
blossomed over tides—   
bruises being born   
   
in silence, so slow,   
so out there, around,   
above and below.   
   
In such hurts of sound   
the known world became   
neither flat nor round.   
   
The steaming tea pot   
was all we fathomed   
of   is and   is not .   
   
The hours were hallways   
with doors at the ends   
opened into days   
   
fading into night   
and the scattering   
particles of light.   
   
Nothing was done then.   
Nothing was ever   
done. Then it was done.

The next poem, by William Wordsworth, feels so much like the current state of the world that it resonates with me.  In the last two lines, he references two Pagan Gods, Proteus and Triton.  Proteus “was thought to be able to tell the future, though he avoided doing so if he could” and Triton “was said to be able to calm the waves of the sea,” per poemanalysis.com.


The World Is Too Much With Us
By William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Per wikipedia, “Jane Hirshfield (b. 2/24/53) is an American poet, essayist, and translator, known as "one of American poetry's central spokespersons for the biosphere" and recognized as "among the modern masters" who writes "some of the most important poetry in the world today." I found the above after being drawn again and again to the following poem:



French Horn
Jane Hirshfield

For a few days only,
the plum tree outside the window
shoulders perfection.
No matter the plums will be small,
eaten only by squirrels and jays.
I feast on the one thing, they on another,
the shoaling bees on a third.
What in this unpleated world isn’t someone’s seduction?
The boy playing his intricate horn in Mahler’s Fifth,
in the gaps between playing,
turns it and turns it, dismantles a section,
shakes from it the condensation
of human passage. He is perhaps twenty.
Later he takes his four bows, his face deepening red,
while a girl holds a viola’s spruce wood and maple
in one half-opened hand and looks at him hard.
Let others clap.
These two, their ears still ringing, hear nothing.
Not the shouts of bravo, bravo,
not the timpanic clamor inside their bodies.
As the plum’s blossoms do not hear the bee
not taste themselves turned into storable honey
by that sumptuous disturbance.

Now that I have tantalized you with a hornucopia of wordsmithed selections, we have come to the place where you put your proverbial pen to paper and warm it with your poetic spirit's will in words.

• Pen us a poem of precisely 44 words (not counting the title), including some form of the word horn. 
• Post your Quadrille piece on your blog and link back to this post.
• Place the link to your actual post (not your blog url) on the Mister Linky page.
• Don’t forget to check the little box to accept use/privacy policy.
• Please visit other blogs and comment on their posts!  Reciprocation is the life of this challenge.
• Have fun (but only if you want to!)

Mr. Linky for the prompt stays open until Thursday at 3pm NYT.