Archive
07/24/08 - (2)
Page 22 How, possibly, could he have known, imagined, guessed, That his monumental moment of celebrity Would be so exasperatingly evanescent,
The epitome of transience, ephemerality, That the singular debut of two of his surreal poems, In the March 1980 issue of Harper's,
Would both introduce him to and dismiss him from The company of up-and-coming young poets, As the luminary waiting to take the place of aging greats?
He couldn't have, Nor should he have been expected to anticipate such rebuke, After so momentous a placement, on page 22, in that magazine.
But such was the case, during his thirty-day grace period Until the next month's number appeared on the newsstands, That he believed himself to be a genius,
America's newly arrived wunderkind Of top-tier, highest-eschelon poets for the next generation, If not eternity's duration.
But that epiphanic event occurred twenty-eight years ago, And still he labors in solitude's cloisters, Scribbling verse, on blue-ruled pages — As anonymous and anomalous, to the famous, As ever he was, before that venerable publication Gave him a forum on the heights of Helicon,
Leading him to believe that he'd achieve immortality, At precisely the season of his poetic maturation, When, had the gods been so inclined
To bestow, upon his verse, their imprimatur, He might have emerged as the author of David's psalms, Dante's cantos, Shakespeare's pristine sonnets.
Tonight, as he's done every night, for almost three decades, In the dank basement of his imagination, He copies, into his notebook, those same two poems.
07/24/08 - (2)
|
|||
|
|||
