(see Pentadactyl)

Thinking again about dactyls and how they don’t tolerate
stress out of place or the sneaky insertion of syllables,
gladly and humbly I wonder, perhaps I should moderate
poetry calling them dinosaurs, bigots and imbeciles.

P’raps we should think of a dactyl as champion of chastity,
raising the banner of vehement structural sanctity,
hating the sin of iambic compulsion of poetry,
leading the poet in pathways of diligent purity.

 

 

A dactyl (/ˈdæktɪl/; Greek: δάκτυλος, dáktylos, “finger”) is a foot in poetic meter…. In accentual verse… it is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (SOURCE)