Ballad of the
Non-payment
What we see is
burning planes
the compost of sad old
refrains
no song collects human remains.
A poem is what is
tossed aside
by any reader who aims
to glide
above rhyme for a novel
ride;
I have some wisdom left
apart
for my children never
came to start
the acting father in
me, so smart
I somehow learned to
uncreate
the brood I thought
would inundate
our gardens with their
fortunate
water pistols aimed at
trees;
I've some words to
give freely;
these are words like
shooting sprees:
there is no God but the
god you leave;
there is no loss but
that you grieve;
and it is better to
love than live;
though living is what
love requires;
the world dampens love’s
true fires;
for truth and love are
not the spires
on which our global
good is built;
we rise to worship all
that’s gilt;
we mourn fewer than get
killed;
if I could warn I’d
remove all doubt:
it is better not to
write a lot;
and if you do, try not
to shout;
they can hear you even
though
you never speak above a
slow
mourning whimper,
asking how
they know you are so
beautiful
and yet they’ve had
their fill
before they’ve had any
at all.
It isn’t lasting but it is
the fate
to arrive too early,
stay too late
and lean against a
burning gate
that soon, low ash, will
topple you
for being no more than
evening dew;
the night has little
else to do
with poems, poets,
those who think
their meanings and
language sink
ships or move the world
to a brink;
the day has even less
time for us;
we, to creation, being most useless;
our dry course, and
longing curse.
Be a doctor, lawyer,
good with sums;
bang pots, pans and
goat-skin drums;
garden with a prudent
thumb;
no green accrues, no
gold arrives,
by writing into being
what never lives;
the poet dies each time
she gives.
A poet dies because
she pays a tax
for which no ruler has
ever asked;
she tithes and tithes
away the mask
until her body, mind
and spirit lie
upon a floor of spilled grain and flies;
but threshes those who
aspire to try
enumerating stars, molecules, the ant
across the lintel or the pouring sand;
to count out the illegible plan
nature’s claws, mad Zeus’s
design;
refrain, resign, diplomatically decline;
the word’s unwanted in the anodyne.
Knock back a quick one, salute the bar;
where you are going is not that far;
you’ll soon close shut the one true door.
poem by Todd Swift
July 22, 2014; revised July 26.
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