The two pictures are the front and the back of a sculpture I made in 1997 as a quick sketch of an idea called The Dream of the Poet. Material is fired clay.


O NLY   O N E  P O E M


Only one poem

The one song of truth

Beauty and madness -

One sustained note

Throughout eternity.




This knowledge profits

No-one

Rimbaud knew at twenty

His work complete

Left northern skies

came home bronzed and

Broken out of Abyssinia;




Tu Fu exiled in a land

Ravaged by wars

His simple cottage

Ripped apart by a storm

Boys stealing the rest

Broken in body and heart

But still writing poems

Poetic witness of his era;




That great bohemian poet

Dylan Thomas

The lyric stream dried up

Found another source

Died like his brother Poe

Prostrate and overdosed

In a strange city.



LiPo drunk upon

Wine and poetry

Dissembling madness

The poems falling again

And again -like snow

Or Autumn leaves

Into the greedy swirls

Of the river-

Always the same poem

Falling again and again

Into the river of life



                             Only one poem

                               But in a thousand forms-



Written in 1996