The First Step

 The young poet Evmenis
complained one day to Theocritus:
"I've been writing for two years now
and I've composed only one idyll.

It's my single completed work.

I see, sadly, that the ladder
of Poetry is tall, extremely tall;
and from this first step I'm standing on now
I'll never climb any higher.
"
Theocritus retorted: "Words like that
are improper, blasphemous.

Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.

To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you've done already is a wonderful thing.

Even this first step
is a long way above the ordinary world.

To stand on this step
you must be in your own right
a member of the city of ideas.

And it's a hard, unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.

Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.

To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you've done already is a wonderful thing.
"

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