Without The Wherewithall
To Thushari Williams
Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us
Will never be forgotten, the long days you laboured
In the care home, your care-worn comings home
To sit with Brenda Williams, po?te maudit sang pur,
Labouring together to bring to light poems buried alive
And turn them into a book, the living text
Proof enough of your divine gift as muse
And enchantress of both word and screen.
Now in far Indonesia you strive to strike a bargain
With an uncaring world, webmaster with magic fingertips
You engrave the words of us, careworn poets of our age,
In blue and scarlet on a canvas alabaster page.
Simulacrum more real than reality itself,
Should reality exist in cyberspace.
My Pr?vert, my Nerval, I never thought to see
So handsomely orthographed, like Li Po scrolled
In Chinese water by a blue pagoda.
Indeed if anyone could write in troubled water
It would be you, my dearest daughter.
Whether this world will grant you a living
Only time’s indifference and your subtle craft will tell,
Artists like poets live on other’s bounty, as you know so well.