Erstwhiles, <br />of candle-laboured hours and screwed-up eyes, <br />the quill scratch-scratching, the paper ragged rough, the ink <br />unwieldy, black and unredeeming <br />as a judge’s cap – <br /> <br />fame – or barely fame, <br />the least to be hoped for, a mere ‘name’ – a <br />mere sheet of scrawled, curled paper <br />passed around a smoky coffee-house: they <br />so shrewd of eye and savage oft of wit; <br /> <br />or at the best, the whim of jobbing printer: <br />then, fame or forgetting lay beyond this life. <br /> <br />The grave’s a humbling, private place <br />where even poets labelled ‘metaphysical’ <br />begin their education quite anew… <br /> <br />and yet, and yet - some centuries ahead, <br />some divine post-classic irony may devise <br />a means of universal access <br />to poems quite unread <br />(alas, and oft unread their readers too…) <br /> <br />and so, humbled by cold grave and death, <br />there’s one more humbling yet to bear: <br />the stripling’s comments on a verse that lives, <br />the poet – would he know it – dead: <br />‘Not so great – keep writing’… <br /> <br />raising in these bleachwhite bones and grimjaw skull <br />the faintest meta-physical, unseen <br />ghost of a smile<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0124-a-dead-poet-comments-on-comments/
