Why do I look for your face in every crowd
Though I know you most likely
Have not yet been born?
I believe you will one day wield
The jawbone of an ass.
If Sampson were to pull down the stone façade
Would he not also crush the marbled prophets of Israel
Who still adorn its walls
And yourself along with them?
For you there was something erotic
in the pursuit of prophecy
A heat of knowledge
An intellectual energy
The verbal hopscotch of mindfeet alighting
On stones in the still water at sundown
Again the poem is a field that must be plowed
Aligned in rows the words become nutrients in new soil
Like great clay clods that must be broken.
The poet has the roll of prophecy thrust upon him
When no one else will speak the truth. Only the kernel
Of every object nourishes. Where is he who
Undoes the envelopes and removes the husks?
The elect hear the awful voice of the reprobate.
Its annoying and loud. It grates against their eardrums.
They whisper to each other, “I wonder what small amount
Of money could be paid to stop this noise?”
It is as though the Hebrew tradition of killing God’s prophets
Is continued from ancient days. The voice of Prophecy
Is still the voice of honest indignation.
There is a reason that those who came after Wordsworth
Considered him to be a turncoat
And remembered him with the bitterest enmity:
He became a poet laureate
An adjunct of the state
A Sampson shorn of his locks
And paraded before them in chains.
But the real vital force of poetry
Will always confront the elect.
This is why I mistrust poetry produced
Within the academy itself;
It has no awareness of its purpose.
Where has the power of poetry gone?
Where are Neruda or Ginsberg?
In the ancient times referred to by anthropologists
As the 1960’s poets packed political clout
Capable of antagonizing the force of evil
In the world. What happened to change that?
* Notes:
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship, and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.
(Shelley on Wordsworth)
When Wordsworth abandoned poverty he became a sell out.
