From my music training I knew that some Spanish rhythms apart 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's only when you add a rest - a sixth beat - that it sounds as it surely should sound.
When I speak of 'cycles ' I am referring to lengthy intervals of relative homogeneity if not in the resolving of problems than at least with respect to the consistency of their capacity to productively irritate.