For your enjoyment: Kay Ryan’s “Blandeur”
I, for some reason, absolutely love Kay Ryan’s book Say Uncle, and though I can’t quite explain it (other than the move in poetry toward brevity may have gone a little past what you could call “generally enjoyable” into the realm of visual art) but Ryan’s very terse, jokey, rhymey poems toe the edge while giving you enough to keep you busy. They’re thinkers, but not because they’re incomprehensible. Here’s one of my favorites, which has already been much anthologized.
Blandeur by Kay Ryan
If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth’s
rondure, flatten
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures
to arable land,
remand your glaciers
and silence
their calving,
halving or doubling
all geographical features
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts.
Withdraw your grandeur
from these parts.