On Poetry


Can you a poet be?
Surely you can put down words
And arrange them, rhyme them
(Or not, if you want to publish)
You can form them into forms
The sonnets, the villanelles
(Or not, if you want to publish)
But even if you write the words,
And see them into print
Can you a poet be?
And where there are great poems
Whose language is a fire
That burns out all the exaltation
In your heart
And you struggle to make your own
And fail
Can you a poet be?
But what if poetry is more than art
More than the words
So carefully arranged,
What if it is the world itself
Which stuns you
In some small glance
Like irises shouting spring
Or when you look into the eyes
Of some wild thing
And both of you know you know
As you at its magnificence quail
Or when you walk
In the raw beauty of the
Complicated earth
And every inch of it
Is its own universe
Can you a poet be?
For it is not the words themselves
But that you have to recreate
–– You must ––
What was given unto you
And birth it into incandescent afterlife
In all the imagination of our kind
As that one holy duty ––
You see
You cannot be a poet
–– But must ––
Let poetry be​