The ether of Letters is sour.
Is it possible no poet flies near the sun?
We’ve never seen an age so busy
With poetry where nothing excellent is done.
Criticism was never accepted
By poets too proud
To sing mating songs
Now that streets are loud.
Under the skyscraper’s shadow
Rats and birds pick
At refuse. “I’m a man!
I’m a man! And I’m sick!”
You went into the basement
Where the poets filled out forms.
Today belongs to ink.
Yesterday, storms.
Pink Floyd lost Syd Barrett
And mourning him, went on to fame.
She didn’t really love you—you
Were not the first—so it wasn’t quite the same.
Oh but she did love you—
You were not the last
To find one could both transcend—
And stay to find out about the past.
The death of a beautiful woman
Is the essence of lyric, not because
She is beautiful or woman; gone
Is the gist of what she does.
And you are gone, the person
You once were—you now see
The punctual performance
Of the mightiest poetry.
You substituted one insight for another,
Claiming for yourself a life
In which the folly of the girlfriend
Dignified the wife.
You met someone both demanding
And helpless—instantly
You thought how you surrendered
To her. Instantly you were free.
Because she couldn’t love
Her father, she love-hates you—
And when you acted like her mother
There was nothing the muses could do.