The Poet’s Vocation
There is something reassuring about the dark
When one can see lights in the distance. Remark
The glow of domestic lights, not too far
Like the cold comfort of a star.
But in the middle distance,
As lights in a suburban house or cultivated manse.
Lanterns hung aloft in an arbour,
Or taper burning in some garden grot.
Lights that proclaim human activity or human devotion,
In the midst of nature which is not
At its best when pruned or pollarded out of recognition;
But appears at its best as a cultivated wilderness.
Perhaps it is the essence of humanity to love nature.
Other may use it as a house or hunting ground,
Only humans worship it.
Even if this is now the preserve of poets only.
For who but a poet would walk abroad at this hour,
To look at the moon that looms large and red
Over the trees that are like domes and cupolas
Against the luminous horizon.
Such moments have their magic, but the magic fades.
The shadows dissipate as the moon rises higher
And the moonlight loses its misty refulgence.
The solitary owl on the silk-cotton tree
Flies off after calling once in a forlorn note.
To record the passage of such moments
Is a lonely trade.
Only the sequestered virtue of a rhym
Can rescue from the redux of time;
The passing moments that passes without a trace.
Or evoke the real genius of a place.
For who would waste time on this obscure calling
That has no profitable end in view.
Perhaps only the daredevil mountaineer
Or hardy explorer who leaves
His bones to bleach in some forsaken land
Can really understand,
What it is that poets seek in their lonely quest
For an unknown goal that becomes manifest
Only by an act of grace.
Even then the personal vision,
May only meet with incomprehension or derision.
Or the literary prize that brings instant fame
All these must be left to those
Renegade poets who divagate into prose.
The poet’s true vocation
Must be to follow his own inclination,
And with only one end in view
To give speech to some obscure truth,
Simply because it happens to be true.
