Once a story is told,
A crazy story not quite believed—everything else takes hold:
The poetry, the love, the belief the story isn’t true,
And all the poets pause before the story because of what it says about you.
Poison, mixed in a jar, will lose its force.
The poison of a story never gets old.
A good story will never stop; every poet wants to ride the horse,
And every poet—no matter how good—falls off;
Poets are not reporters; poets fly too close to the sun,
Poets sing weakly in shadows, die by a criticism, or a cough.
The story tramples poetry; no poet benefited from news, not one.
Actress Gloria Grahame had lots of men—but she couldn’t stay away
From one man—Tony Ray,
The son of her director husband, and later her husband for 14 years,
The son she was caught with when he was thirteen.
One story kills illustrious careers.
Cruelty is everlasting. The knife of cruelty is keen,
But nothing is crueler than a story, though it’s low on our list of fears,
A bunch of words—and who cares what a poem might mean,
Unless a poet can somehow tell a story, too—
Not at all what a poet is supposed to do:
Leave that to the liars and the gossipy scum,
Who paint the shipwreck, but never the beautiful foam
Scattered by the wind, the spray which the setting sun shines through—
The ship which had a note on board, a poem you might call it, a warning, written for you, for you.