The Poet


The poet sees all sides perforce.
He can't just see one side and call it life.
He takes a favourite and risks losing the fire.
Poetry cannot rest as some icon of virtue
Nor is it a corollary of natural justice.
It is ultimately about facts and figures
like the bill presented after dinner.

So if Ezra Pound would sit at the table
With Mussolini and his mistress,
He would observe the trappings of power
As only a certain poet could.
He might sit with the devil himself
But under what spell his pen takes ink
We can see well enough for ourselves

And if Clive James thinks he is a poet
He might well give advice to kings,
Acquaint himself with the upper echelon
And the secret passages inside the courts
But his main goal has been achieved:
To return to his roots and yet remain
A welcome stranger.

T.S. Eliot drew the serious side:
Every detail studied by the mind.
In the numbed aftermath of the wars
He may well have wondered 
about manhood, honour and mortality.
His words are so obtuse:
Like the shock of a dawn so new.

The poet is there with the shoe-shine boys
He would starve with them if he could
The poet is there with the stock brokers
He would beat anyone at their own game
The poet is there with the courtesans
He would save one and love her forever
But could he make any one of them laugh?

Lucignano, 19 June 2006