Poets

Scientists seldom are born, but the poets come one ina

hundred,

which is too many: it suits

tribal conditions at best.

Picture America's vast population, and think how it harbors

two million possible bards.

Talk about oversupply:

one, maybe two, toa language, as everyone knows, is

sufficient-

one to do tragedy, one

comedy. More, and they fight.

Towers of Babel diversify tongues; but a Babel's expensive.

Though we are building one now,

though it will pull us apart

soon, all jabbering incomprehensibly, loathing each other,

still the illusion remains

ours is a workable speech.

Only in primitive ages could perfect plurality flourish.

Native Australia spoke

five hundred languages once.

Each tongue wagged with a poet, who sung things live and in

color,

polished and kept words sharp.

There the proportions were right.

Nights after catching a rabbit, they'd stage an historical drama,

keeping traditions alive,

body and spirits intact.

Stuck in their customs, they never developed a wheel, ora

bomb, or

one flat simplified speech.

Colonists shot them up quick,

sending the poets, along with the women and babies, to

Heaven.

What had become of their own

poets has seldom been guessed.

So we shall try. Malnutrition, of course, is a possible answer.

Poets are tardy at meals;

some aren't invited at all.

Back when humanity started its age-long quest for abundance,

scarcity was the result.

Man grew obsessed with his seed,

planted his fields and his women. The women were always

more fruitful.

Babies grew faster than beans;

someone, of course, had to starve.

Why not the poets? For tilling recalcitrant fields they were

useless,

troubled by notions that God's

earth had a life of its own.

That's how it went for millenniums down to Imperial

England,

home of our colonists, stout

murderers, shipped overseas,

loosed from the gallows in London, where many a poet had

perished.

Morals inspired the laws;

it was illegal to starve.

In the abundant society going today, it's a problem,

keeping the poetry down.

That's what our cultural life's

for. It replaces the rope as a means for displaying the poets.

Magazines, critics, reviews-

excellent system it is:

either it flatters a poet until he is maddened with praises;

or it deprives him of sense,

stuck in a corner ignored.

Both ways, whole generations of poets conveniently perish,

visions are buried, and all

classes are safe from the threat.

There's no question of going around, entertaining the people;

that's for the crooners, the folk

singers, and similar types.

Serious poems are much too solemn for mere entertainment.

That is the beauty of art

these days: pedantry blooms.

Only an expert even attempts to unravel its marvels.

Yearly the experts change.

Beautiful. Once we convince

poets to write things murky enough to be quickly forgotten,

poetry's problem is solved.

Fashions are altered so quick,

verse grows incomprehensible faster than poets can write it,

ruining all in their haste.

Everything follows from one

principle: art that requires an expert judge is a dead art.

Stillborn poems permit

poets to scribble unharmed.

It was unpleasant and wasteful to break good necks on a

gallows.

Nurture them. Let's be humane.

Think of young Jeremy's case.

Jeremy authored some verses, and finding that no one would

praise them,

sulked; then attended a course

taught by a light of the Age;

found him a fine, disappointingly heterosexual teacher.

Only his talented fe

males were promoted to print.

Jeremy, rapidly aging, got married and moved to a suburb,

where he is now to be found,

angrily authoring still.

Isn't he perfectly harmless? He'll join the Republican Party

soon and attack welfare,

want more hydrogen bombs. . . .

Give him his arsenals. Hitler, they say, was a frustrated poet.

Ah, could a danger to peace

lurk in this authoring urge

poised like a useless appendix within our political body,

harmless until it inflames,

ruptures, and poisons us all?

Oughtn't our poets be fondled, massaged, and encouraged to

publish,

so that the sickness may seep

out and be vented in safe

dribbles, infecting at most some localized section of art world?

What harm comes when a plucked

vanity pecks up a grain?

Ah, you're a poet! And what will you do with your latest

production?

Gaze at it, formed of your flesh;

savor its personal smell

quickly, before it is flushed down some university press,

friend,

into oblivion. That's

. that. Publication's the thing:

rapture disconsolate poets before their insanity ruptures.

Unread poems permit

poets to publish at will.

Yet, sometimes, when a poet may actually fascinate people,

no one need worry: the new

system will swallow him too.

Put him on TV, fawn on him, praise him: he'll turn to

commercials.

Praise is the purest of sweets;

vanity waters for more,

till the perceptions, like teeth once deadly, decay and are pulled

out.

Then he will taste by the rules,

false teeth stuck in his gums.

Then he can safely be glorified, having become mediocre.

Publicists seem to enjoy

which is a good thing: everyone wishes the public protected.

Nowadays no one enjoys

honesty. Let's be humane!

O it is not that our poets are far too numerous merely;

it's that society can't

stomach its poets at all-

not live poets: it's grown too mellow; it's tired of visions,

sick of beholding itself,

paunchy, unshaven, and blear,

caught in its mirror of art. We have come to the stage in our

culture

known as the taking of sides:

liberal and fascist agree

man is a mocked-up image exactly described in a theory.

Conjure your half-man, friends;

half-gods can't be believed:

They were creations of poets, who sung things live for a people.

How can we tolerate man's

mad contradictory selves?

How can a civilization endure its absurdity ever,

figure its fate with a song,

mourn for itself and be gay?

Always some solemn Aeneas, escaped from the passions of

Dido,

lashed by irrational seas,

proves we are noble and good.

Then, being sordid and mean, we indulge sick hearts in

hysterics,

shriek against life-and against

poets profounder than we.

Virgil, I fondle this image of you: Palinurus, your helmsman,

weary, enchanted with sleep,

peaceful at last in his depths.

Sir, does a poet survive by becoming so polished and subtle,

men all miss what he means,

all of them sure that they know?

Maybe there's hope for the bards when our culture dissolves

into folklore,

fantasies, ancient beliefs,

leaving its theories behind.

Maybe; but who can imagine the dark aborigine tribesmen?

Who'll much care for the world

after our Babel is built?

So I must sentence myself to society's curse on the poets. . . .

Friends, have you noticed I'm not

really a poet at all?

Critics sufficiently learned to tell what meter I'm using

call these nonsensical lines

cleverly versified prose.