A Hypothesis

Was it that the prose did you in,
As your Thought-Fox had warned?
You read that poem over and over,
recited it, recorded it, told it,
yet in the end ignored the warning.

I expect you owed it to the Bard.
If it hadn’t done you in, wouldn’t he have?
Anyway, surely the prose, as such, wasn’t responsible.

What did you in, perhaps, was the waxing of your powers.
Translation’s muse beckoned, hugged you.
Only she turned out to have more limbs than Siva.

Ovid, OK. But then there was Aeschylus, Euripides,
the Gawain poet, Gilgamesh, on and on probably.
They stepped almost simultaneously from the wings,
into a corridor that dwindled away.

And so you set out,
even knowing you’d have to dispose of them at some point.
At some point, you’d have to turn,
to attend to other business, your own.
Perhaps you hadn’t the heart.

Wednesday

November 18, 1999

4 a.m.

From  Letters to Ted,  published by Anvil Press Poetry Ltd.,  2002