Long Before You and Long After You

No poetry requires its reading by

A lukewarm reader.  If we do not want

To read it, it will live within the sky

Of poetry forever and will haunt

That heaven if we do not bother with

Its royalty, its kingship, with its crown.

Our poetry has lived as long as myth.

It offers us the chance to reach its gown

And touch its hem, and give the chance to heal

Our eyes.  When poetry is mixed with mud

And highest spirit mixed with stainless steel,

The human grasps it in his glistening blood.

  Ignore, despise it, turn your back, seek dross.

    True lines will be here after your blank loss.

~~~~~

Hamlet:                   And fix’d his eyes upon you?

Horatio:  Most constantly.

“as a molten looking glass” ~ Job 37:18