When the poem gets the last laugh
(Rosalinda, you know it will)
Civilization returns.
Writing takes precedent,
Not selfish, worldly concerns.
But my writing teacher, walking slowly, says
“It must be clear that a particular kind of life
Is in the poem.” Seamus Heaney
Comes to mind. The young poet
Sits by a window, and, with forced metaphor,
(A “pen” doesn’t “dig”) declaims
On his father’s rural domain,
With words like “curt” and “blunt” and “bog,”
Fart-like words to solemnly look back
At childhood’s “gnash” and “fat” and “spittle.”
The ponderous description of a frog—
The odd things that scared this helpless Irish boy
In a kind of Wordsworthian joy.
Is Romanticism coming back again?
Are there traditions which do not die?
Do we find promethean Shelley
At the bottom of a heath?
Singing to dung?
Piles of books still rain down on the young.
They’re “digging” for the “new.”
But Eliot’s Tradition, the one we study
At the recent end—
Will not change. Nor will Wordsworth. Nor will you.
Nietzsche said rebellion is nothing but sorrow,
And all humans are gnats.
But oh, what a gnat! A gnat who knows how to play guitar.
Shelley sings. Now that’s what we call a star.