Poem, Not Poema or Even Poésie

Would literary English have made advance

If Chaucer had not benefited chance

By fortunes of inheritance

Gained by relatives’ misfortunes

Misfortunes that were relative and

Inherent to those whose final breaths

Inhaled the ravages of Black Death

Through Latin fields with French undertones

He laid the English stepping-stones

A path for authors yet born or known

To tread upon, and lay their own

His written words, they lit the path

A ray of light, a sunbeam

Not “columna lûcis”

Not “rayon de soleil”

You read it right, a sunbeam

And, it’s “Through the Kindness of rAveNs”

Not

“Per Humanitas Corvuum”

Or even

“Par la Bonté des Corbeaux”