I am not writing because I feel as though I am standing in my grave, looking out upon the poetic excitement among the poets, the businessmen stashing it away, the lovers exuberant, the executives fierce in their vision of efficiency. Each has life by the hair. Yet each will stand dumb, the poetry of their lives will have come to a standstill. It will not occur to them that they have carried the burden of their charge to its limits, the poem taking over and writing itself on their faces as puzzlement and anguish. The poem will have become the ruler of their lives to shape them as it seems fit, as objects in the universe of charged particles. They will end their lives standing in an open grave and looking about them at the crowds poetically mad with themselves, in actions fit to their desires and singing. We will hear their singing of money, of power, of love, of success, and we will see it wind down to their puzzlement and frustration and disbelief, victims of their dreams. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO MARK ANTHONY IN HEAVEN by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS DESPAIR AND FEAR by EMILY DICKINSON THE FIRST BLUEBIRD by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY UPON THE IMAGE OF DEATH by ROBERT SOUTHWELL THE SONNET by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH MODERN MANNERS by MARY (CUMBERLAND) ALCOCK IN DEFENSE OF YOUTH by ROBBINS WOLCOTT BARSTOW |