This will be brief. Four short things I'm going to read, two of which are advanced as possible mottoes for the future, or at least as news from the poetry community--examples of things that might get written on the board.

First thing, from Dr William Carlos Williams, an American poet

It is difficult to get the news from poems
and people die every day from the lack found there

'The lack found there ... ' that is, the absence of something. By poems, he meant truth, and the purpose to search it out

The other goes back about 400 and something years. It's a short Latin poem (translated into English) by Sir Thomas More. You all will remember, he was the Lord Chancellor under Henry the Eighth.

When our Prince is true and good
He is the dog that guards the flock
But when he's false, he turns into
A wolf who takes us for his food.

Sir Thomas More got his head cut off--not for that poem, but it didn't help a lot--and got his head cut off and his title changed to 'Saint.' Saint Thomas More.

Now what I thought--I've been looking around for something I had written, that had this in mind, but not as clearly as More, but I realized that possibly there wouldn't be anything quite like this on the program and I thought I'd read what I call a couple of attack poems, where we attack other people who bother us.

Here for example--these are both very literary, but bear with it--are just a couple:

Book review

I am using your pages to start wet kindling wood
Amazing such pale poems can make a bright fire

Just about fits.

To a certain critic (It doesn't have to be a literary critic. We're all criticized every day, every way -- it gives me some comfort from time to time to think of this one)

To a Certain Critic

Walking in the woods

You turn over a rotten log

And out from under

Crawls something very snot-like and pale

If it could open its mouth and talk good English

You'd know exactly what you sound like to me

Finish up with one that's true, and came to mind when the pope died and we got a new pope--back in 1958 -- it's called Italian lesson, and it ends with a little motto that fits perfectly

Whenever I hear of the death of a major poet these days

I remember Rome 1958

Myself standing alongside an enormous

newspaper kiosk in Trastevere

'Papa e morto' The Pope is Dead, the headline read

 

As the priest turned away, a voice from the crowd

--All of them too poor to buy a paper--

Called out, "Is it the holy father is dead?"

The priest nods, then shrugs hugely

And answers him in the local dialect,

"Better him than us" and walks off

To his chores among the poor

Who are always with us

Even unto the end of the world.

 

(April 20, 2006)