The "Rhyme, damn you!" challenge

[iampunha]

Over here, CairoCarol thought of a fun writing challenge:

Take nonrhyming poetry and make it rhyme. Butcher it, if necessary -- all in the name of the almighty rhyme!

So here, without further ado, is the rhyming version of since feeling is first, by e.e. cummings

since feeling is the first to call
who pays any due
to the syntax of it all
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in creation's pool

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better move
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t be dumb
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which can

know we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a sen

tence and death i think is nothing but so many cheap charms


Bonus points to anyone who imports poetry from before rhyming was what was done.

[Hatshepsut]

Pshaw. You call that butchery? Try this poem by Saisei Muro, from a volume of modern Japanese poetry that I have:

When a musician steps down off the stage,
When he steps down, sent off with the clapping of a fine
crowd of people,
what an intense and deserted isolation he must feel.
In spite of that thunder of admiration
how deeply a fine musician, outside the bounds of the
crowd of people,
must love with a passion the height of isolation that is his.

THIS is butchery (alcoholism reference added at no extra charge):

When a musician steps down, down off the stage
The audience claps, the crowd has no rage
He must feel alone, as if in a cage
In his heart all alone must be a presage:
Despite all the people who think he’s a sage
He’ll feel better alone as he drinks up his wage.