To some an ego is the nurse
Of every frenzied start in verse;
Others feel that in the end
Self-indulgence is the trend
For poets, bards & scribblers all,
Unafraid to heed the call
Of every sunset in the sky:
Some say this (and so have I).
*
But then there is the brighter height
To which a few have found their way,
The words and lines that came out right
Enough to give us pause and say:
Although indulgence it may be,
& though the world is spinning fast,
The poets with their melancholy
Are creatures that were built to last.
*
Hungry often for the kind
Of cadence which will linger on,
The scribblers who go out to find
A life that stands, a loaded gun,
Are braver than the papers know:
The road is quite a crowded one
And there are always miles to run,
And few will cheer them as they go.
Now Indulgence beats its drum,
The strings begin to squawk and hum,
Every note of pitch unsound
Rendered rooted in the ground,
Dashed up with coats of flowered paint,
Word-watered ‘til the readers faint…
And all the lamps in every head
Are lighting up with poems once read,
Now repeated in the glow
Of frantic notebooks in the night:
Oh, few will cheer us as we go,
But going is each poet’s right,
And there are roads that shine by night.
*
So enough, all critics, do not speak!
For we will always be around,
& if the hinges tend to squeak
On doors young poets built in sound,
At least they built, and that is all –
The dying with a dying fall
Of voices in the rooms of song
Is music which will carry on.
And so it should, for so it has;
We all were young & passionate as
Saucy Chaucy, Shakespeare, too,
Were once when once they felt they knew
A world of work in words ahead:
The poets rambling in our head
Were people (as it has been said)
Who followed on the books they read.
*
Passion is the only nurse
That whispers us into our verse.
For some, to gaze across the sky
& hear a wingbeat in the heart
Is just where poets ought to start,
& just how some have reached so high:
Some say this; and so do I.
