Four Perspectives on the Power of Poetry

I.
A man sits on a park bench.
The wind ruffles his hair,
But the rest of him is undisturbed.
II.
The wind blows through the branches
Of trees, swaying them slightly
Or bending them to breaking point.

One sees that the wind is a rhetorical force,
A form of persuasion.

III.
The wind whistles through the branches,
But the spaces between the branches are like
Dead bodies, in which the soul can no longer strive.

IV.
The wind whistles through pursed lips,
Making a melody from Beethoven.
It is the melody of a man driving
Past his sister’s house on his way to work.

This is the difference between a man
And a tree.
This is the difference between a man
And everything else.