Monday 24 August 2015

Left Behind

for AO

During a brief online exchange
with a friend and fellow poet
whose courage as a writer
far exceeds my own

I use one of the few weapons
at my disposal:
some smartarse knowledge of other poets
and the things they may have written

Paul Valéry once wrote I write,
authoritatively,
poems are never finished
only abandoned

which opens up the possibility
for me to bring the conversation
down to my level
where I feel more comfortable

A quote I quip
which I thought worked better with ‘homework’
but, you know, twenty-plus years of teaching
can do that to a man

Which is one of the reasons why,
I now realise,
when his  extraordinary images
withstand

my daft playthings
will have been forgotten
like the silent laughter
of my long dead audiences   

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