The New English Bible
 
“The anonymous lightness and grace committee is a notion worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan.”
                                                                ─  Kenneth Rexroth, “The New English Bible” (essay, 1961).
 
This meeting of the anonymous light
And grace committee will come to order:
First, do we have any darkness to fight?
No? Good. Now if I could say a word here—
Light’s much easier to achieve than grace—
That’s true, ask anyone on the board here.
Just light a candle—it’s simple to displace
The darkness—but to reach that delicate lilt,
Manage words so they’re both lovely and chaste—
That’s one tough nut. I ought to know, I’ve built
My small poems, though I’m loath to mention them.
We need to make sure we show more lily than gilt.
Though, yes, decoration’s fine now and then.
Still, we might want to pray before we begin.

 Mark J. Mitchell

If you have any comments on this poem,  Mark J. Mitchell  would be pleased to hear them.