Give us another poem, he said
Or they will think your muse is dead;
Another middle-age departure
Of Apollo from the trade of archer.
Bring out a book as soon as you can
To let them see you're a living man,
Whose comic spirit is untamed
Though sadness for a little claimed
The precedence; and tentative
You pulled your punch and wondered if
Old cunning Silence might not be
A better bet than poetry.
You have not got the countenance
To hold the angle of pretence,
That angry bitter look for one
Who knows that art's a kind of fun;
That all true poems laugh inwardly
Out of grief-born intensity.
Dullness alone can get you beat
And so can humour's counterfeit.
You have not got a chance with fraud
And might as well be true to God.
Then link your laughter out of doors
In sunlight past the sick-faced whores
Who chant the praise of love that isn't
And bring their bastards to be Christened
At phoney founts by bogus priests
With rites mugged up by journalists.
Walk past professors looking serious
Fondling an unpublished thesis --
'A child! my child! my darling son'
Some Poets of Nineteen Hundred and One
Note well the face profoundly grave.
An empty mind can house a knave.
Be careful to show no defiance.
They've made pretence into a science:
Card-sharpers of the art committees
Working all the provincial cities,
They cry 'Eccentric' if they hear
A voice that seems at all sincere.
Fold up their table and their gear
And with the money disappear.
But satire is unfruitful prayer,
Only wild shoots of pity there,
And you must go inland and be
Lost in compassion's ecstasy,
Where suffering soars in summer air --
The millstone has become a star.
Count then your blessings, hold in mind
All that has loved you or been kind:
Those women on their mercy missions.
Rescue work with kiss or kitchens,
Perceiving through the comic veil
The poet's spirit in travail.
Gather the bits of road that were
Not gravel to the traveller
But eternal lanes of joy
On which no man who walks can die.
Bring in the particular trees
That caught you in their mysteries.
And love again the weeds that grew
Somewhere specially for you.
Collect the river and the stream
That flashed upon a pensive theme,
And a positive world make,
A world man's world cannot shake,
And do not lose love's resolution
Though face to face with destitution.
If Platitude should claim a place
Do not denounce his humble face;
His sentiments are well-intentioned
He has a part in the larger legend.
So now my gentle tiger burning
In the the forest of no-yearning
Walk on serenly, do not mind
That Promised Land you thought to fund
Where the worldly-wise and rich take over
The mundane problems of the lover.
Ignore Power's schismatic sect
Lovers alone lovers protect.
-- Patrick Kavanagh