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
