Poets Among Us
There
are poets who take you for a ride,
from
which you will not come back alive,
who
dazzle with incense and myrrh,
who
think sound trumps all sense
or
reports of explosions beyond
the
garden fence. There are poets
who
write lines and pauses
keeping
time to a metronome,
who
are esteemed versifiers,
gathering
in clubs to compose haikus,
or
falling in love with the ghazal
and
renga, those elegant Oriental pursuits.
There
are poets who will be rewarded
by
politicians, talk show hosts and
Rotary,
Lions or the Theosophists.
Happened
in America once,
a
poet read, his hair flaying white,
at
the inauguration of a president.
Started
a trend and a decade. Poetry
is
not far removed from the state
of
the nation. Its words make
metaphors,
are crafted in stanzas
and
books. Poets are self-ordained
but
depend on kind strangers
and
friends to break bread
at
their mass, stopping on pages
to
read before heading out
into
night or day, to work or play,
to
announce, we have rhymes
to
share with you, chocolates
for
all, a few barbed we admit
with
nails, to jolt the conscience,
not
send us to the grave. Will you
listen,
please, take off your shoes
and
throw them at the Moon,
the
Sun, the Stars, but not
at
my face, so help me God,
and
let us get on with the race
to
write new poems, go beyond
the
outer limits of space.
Indran Amirthanayagam July 30, 2012 c) 2012
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