poetry

There is a tradition in Irish poetry in which the poem itself is an answer to a question someone has posed. Somebody says to a guy who is standing in a bar: "What are you doing with those dice?" The guy turns and says:

God rest that Jewy woman,
Queen Jezebel, the bitch
Who peeled the clothes out of the window
Among the geraniums, where
She chaffed and laughed like one half daft
Titivating her painted hair--

King Jehu he drove to her,
She tipped him a fancy beck;
But he from his knacky sidecar spoke,
"Who'll break that dewlapped neck?"
And so she was thrown from the window;
Like Lucifer she fell
Beneath the feet of the horses and they beat
The light out of Jezebel.

The corpse wasn't planted in clover;
Ah, nothing of her was found
Save those grey bones that Hare-foot Mike
Gave me for their lovely sound;
And as once her dancing body
Made starlit princes sweat,
So I'll just clack: though her ghost lacks a back
There's music in the old bones yet.

Which is a way of saying, "You sing your business and I'll sing mine."

James Wright, The Paris Review Interview (Poem: F. R. Higgins, "Song for the Clatter-Bones")