Conversion Piece

If a metre has feet, how hard is a yard?
How long is a song with a beat?
If the rhythm’s trochaic, does that make it archaic
While iambic pentameter’s neat?

Now a stanza’s a verse – or is it the reverse?
And a pair of lines is a couplet,
Or, to my surprise, a tiny bra size
Where a heaving breast is an "uplet."

You can alter the metre with extra feet or
Putting the emphasis on a different syllable,
Or you can make the verse blank
By having it not rhyme.

Is this a conversion, imperial to metric?
Ounces to grams, how I feel, oh,
A certain nostalgia, not for this strained neuralgia.
{Is Ezra} Pound nought point four of a kilo?

How I wi’sh I could di’sh out some li’nes that are swi’sh
In a plán with a scán anapéstic
Wĭth no ri’sk of a mi’ss, and a-bánging my fi’st
And a dri’ft to a fi’t anaph’láctic

Nów must I énd wĭth ă li’ne that’s dacty’lic
Hów I dĕsi’rĕ I wás ŭnstrěsséd
Twi’stěd up sy’ntăx to fi’t ĭn ă rhy’me
Using this schéma ŏf tálk distrěsséd

But

When the tutor insists on a poem
There’s no point in "if," "and" or "but"
And no use to flinch ‘cos if you give an inch
They’ll always insist on a foot