A POET VIEWS COMMON SAINTS

(For Charles Simic)

from his own high vantage
of worldly wisdom
– pen dipped in rare ink –
imputing to them
(being so backward
as to love God and Christ
and hate that in the cultures of the world
which trample the holy)
ignorance and hatred
of wisdom.

It is a sad day
(in centuries of sad days)
when poets walk on the flowers
of the Maker’s garden
because they are simple blooms
with thorns
and say of their fragrance
These have the savor of death,
reviling that
the Gardener loves.

Charles, perhaps some of the priests in your line
knew that very One, and uttered prayers
for an unseen posterity
that He waft upon the breeze into their lives
words of that life dipped in the fountain
of unending youth – so please don’t spit them out
because the vessel is common
or has a little good clean dirt in it.
Don’t spurn the gift of that elixir, which to drink
brings the vision poets gladly live or die for love of.

DEAR FERLINGHETTI

The terrible things you say
– as a severe yet loving father
to a wayward child –
concerning modern poetry
almost alone ring true
in this time of the assassins
of the muse

to accommodate the shoes they make
to take them into easier places
they have laid a vast concrete plain
over the howling archetypal heartlands

this way being a poet is no risk
one just learns the dance-steps
to the fashionable tunes
and sings
with minimal breath

the wild children you called
exist
I have seen them
am one myself
– so have no fear
for the art
(this is no art
but war!)
it is our path
to demolish
what covers
the rich dark earth of the muse
what suffocates
the breath of its trees
leaving feathers and wing-bones
on the parking lot of souls

Ferlinghetti
I just wanted to tell you
I love you
and thanks
for holding up the banner
of life and death
in this land where editors have outlawed
breath
and that which also is beyond
their inner reach:
heart-music, and true speech.