Oh Poetry—You Lonely, Strange Craft

Oh poetry—you lonely, strange craft!
When I look at what I’ve done these last years—
my poems—these last, dark, frightful years—
I feel my gut clenched in hot despair.
Every poem longs to cry farewell
as all falls away.
                     Body falls,
mind falls, and little time is left—
a handful of days, a pocketful of hours—
small change. And look how quickly spent!

Enough! I am sick from trudging the old roads,
chanting again the ancient lamentations.
Ah, poetry! Are you my life? My death?
I close my eyes, lay down my pen, and I hear:

When you fall still, you poet, I am your death.
But when you seize your task, striding down
bravely, down the foundations of your pain,
I am your Eucharist then—body and blood.
I am your hot life when you transform
the lives of others with your living craft—
transmute their fallen dreams, their bitterness
to their own song, their bright, astonished song,
their radiant call,
                   their victory,
                                your craft.

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