True Poet
She asked me if I was a poet?
I said ‘I Am.’
She asked me if I was a true poet?
I said that I was.
She asked me ‘What is a true poet?
I said ‘Someone who lives for poetry.’
Someone who has no choice
but to write evermore eternal poetry.
Someone who turns happiness
into moments of exquisite poetic joy.
Someone who turns tragedy
into intensified heightened transcendent expression.
Someone who watches a leaf fall
from rustic red golden autumn tree;
and has no choice but to fall
gliding, into rhythm of perpetual cyclic life.’
She asked me if you could be a poet
and not write a single poem.
I paused for a moment of contemplation
then Poetry said,
‘Your whole life could be but
a single poem;
the entire course of a whole life lived,
could be but a single impassioned poem.’
She paused overwhelmed then said,
‘You are a true poet.’
I paused to consider throughout
depths of a moment of eternal silence;
then said, ‘It is hard to live suffering,
the consequences, the isolation, of being a poet.’
She said ‘Can you live alone? ’
I said ‘I have lived alone,
sometimes I enjoyed living alone;
but that I enjoyed the companionship of friends.’
She said ‘Only honest people
can live alone.
She said ‘You remind me of Voltaire.’
‘Have you ever read Voltaire? ’
I said ‘No’
She said that I should.
I never did for I was too busy
living a precarious life;
and resolving the tensions, jarring elements,
of the late twentieth century;
[...] Read more
poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
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