U Before I

 

To you a letter. How about q,

Always followed by u, as I

Follow the mark for hay and Hensa?

Too oblique, I know. I know it

Follows, not p to o, but where

We all align, in tidied rows,

Where there are diphthongs we can share,

On monuments a line or less.

O, I say, O. But no one gapes.

They keep, instead, their final shapes.

12 lines. Or several hundred more.

And never again what came before.