10 Best Famous Deftly Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Deftly poems. This is a select list of the best famous Deftly poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Deftly poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of deftly poems.

• All Famous Deftly Poems

 As soon as Fred gets out of bed,
his underwear goes on his head.
His mother laughs, "Don't put it there,
a head's no place for underwear!"
But near his ears, above his brains,
is where Fred's underwear remains.

At night when Fred goes back to bed,
he deftly plucks it off his head.
His mother switches off the light
and softly croons, "Good night! Good night!"
And then, for reasons no one knows,
Fred's underwear goes on his toes.

 In the outskirts of the village 
On the river's winding shores 
Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand the ancient sycamores. 

One long century hath been numbered, 
And another half-way told 
Since the rustic Irish gleeman 
Broke for them the virgin mould. 

Deftly set to Celtic music 
At his violin's sound they grew, 
Through the moonlit eves of summer, 
Making Amphion's fable true. 

Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant! 
Pass in erkin green along 
With thy eyes brim full of laughter, 
And thy mouth as full of song. 

Pioneer of Erin's outcasts 
With his fiddle and his pack- 
Little dreamed the village Saxons 
Of the myriads at his back. 

How he wrought with spade and fiddle, 
Delved by day and sang by night, 
With a hand that never wearied 
And a heart forever light,--- 

Still the gay tradition mingles 
With a record grave and drear 
Like the rollic air of Cluny 
With the solemn march of Mear. 

When the box-tree, white with blossoms, 
Made the sweet May woodlands glad, 
And the Aronia by the river 
Lighted up the swarming shad, 

And the bulging nets swept shoreward 
With their silver-sided haul, 
Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, 
He was merriest of them all. 

When, among the jovial huskers 
Love stole in at Labor's side 
With the lusty airs of England 
Soft his Celtic measures vied. 

Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake 
And the merry fair's carouse; 
Of the wild Red Fox of Erin 
And the Woman of Three Cows, 

By the blazing hearths of winter 
Pleasant seemed his simple tales, 
Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends 
And the mountain myths of Wales. 

How the souls in Purgatory 
Scrambled up from fate forlorn 
On St. Keven's sackcloth ladder 
Slyly hitched to Satan's horn. 

Of the fiddler who at Tara 
Played all night to ghosts of kings; 
Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies 
Dancing in their moorland rings! 

Jolliest of our birds of singing 
Best he loved the Bob-o-link. 
"Hush!" he'd say, "the tipsy fairies! 
Hear the little folks in drink!" 

Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle, 
Singing through the ancient town, 
Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant 
Hath Tradtion handed down. 

Not a stone his grave discloses; 
But if yet his spirit walks 
Tis beneath the trees he planted 
And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks. 

Green memorials of the gleeman! 
Linking still the river-shores, 
With their shadows cast by sunset 
Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores! 

When the Father of his Country 
Through the north-land riding came 
And the roofs were starred with banners, 
And the steeples rang acclaim,--- 

When each war-scarred Continental 
Leaving smithy, mill,.and farm, 
Waved his rusted sword in welcome, 
And shot off his old king's-arm,--- 

Slowly passed that august Presence 
Down the thronged and shouting street; 
Village girls as white as angels 
Scattering flowers around his feet. 

Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow 
Deepest fell, his rein he drew: 
On his stately head, uncovered, 
Cool and soft the west-wind blew. 

And he stood up in his stirrups, 
Looking up and looking down 
On the hills of Gold and Silver 
Rimming round the little town,--- 

On the river, full of sunshine, 
To the lap of greenest vales 
Winding down from wooded headlands, 
Willow-skirted, white with sails. 

And he said, the landscape sweeping 
Slowly with his ungloved hand 
"I have seen no prospect fairer 
In this goodly Eastern land." 

Then the bugles of his escort 
Stirred to life the cavalcade: 
And that head, so bare and stately 
Vanished down the depths of shade. 

Ever since, in town and farm-house, 
Life has had its ebb and flow; 
Thrice hath passed the human harvest 
To its garner green and low. 

But the trees the gleeman planted, 
Through the changes, changeless stand; 
As the marble calm of Tadmor 
Mocks the deserts shifting sand. 

Still the level moon at rising 
Silvers o'er each stately shaft; 
Still beneath them, half in shadow, 
Singing, glides the pleasure craft; 

Still beneath them, arm-enfolded, 
Love and Youth together stray; 
While, as heart to heart beats faster, 
More and more their feet delay. 

Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar, 
On the open hillside justice wrought, 
Singing, as he drew his stitches, 
Songs his German masters taught. 

Singing, with his gray hair floating 
Round a rosy ample face,--- 
Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen 
Stitch and hammer in his place. 

All the pastoral lanes so grassy 
Now are Traffic's dusty streets; 
From the village, grown a city, 
Fast the rural grace retreats. 

But, still green and tall and stately, 
On the river's winding shores, 
Stand the occidental plane-trees, 
Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores.

 Genius, like gold and precious stones, 
is chiefly prized because of its rarity. 

Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild, 
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, 
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter. 

Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres 
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul 
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid things of earth. 

It is probably on account of this 
that people who have genius 
do not pay their board, as a general thing. 

Geniuses are very singular. 

If you see a young man who has frowsy hair 
and distraught look, and affects eccentricity in dress, 
you may set him down for a genius. 

If he sings about the degeneracy of a world 
which courts vulgar opulence 
and neglects brains, 
he is undoubtedly a genius. 

If he is too proud to accept assistance, 
and spurns it with a lordly air 
at the very same time 
that he knows he can't make a living to save his life, 
he is most certainly a genius. 

If he hangs on and sticks to poetry, 
notwithstanding sawing wood comes handier to him, 
he is a true genius. 

If he throws away every opportunity in life 
and crushes the affection and the patience of his friends 
and then protests in sickly rhymes of his hard lot, 
and finally persists, 
in spite of the sound advice of persons who have got sense 
but not any genius, 
persists in going up some infamous back alley 
dying in rags and dirt, 
he is beyond all question a genius. 

But above all things, 
to deftly throw the incoherent ravings of insanity into verse 
and then rush off and get booming drunk, 
is the surest of all the different signs 
of genius.

 My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before apopleptic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease;
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.

 Alone in Sutton with Fynbos my orange cat

A long weekend of wind and rain drowning

The tumultuous flurry of mid-February blossom

A surfeit of letters to work through, a mountain

Of files to sort, some irritation at the thought

Of travelling to Kentish Town alone when

My mind was flooded with the mellifluous voice

Of Heath-Stubbs on tape reading ‘The Divided Ways’

In memory of Sidney Keyes.



“He has gone down into the dark cellar

To talk with the bright faced Spirit with silver hair

But I shall never know what word was spoken there.”



The best reader of the century, if not the best poet.

Resonant, mesmeric, his verse the anti-type of mine,

Classical, not personal, Apollonian not Dionysian

And most unconfessional but nonetheless a poet

Deserving honour in his eighty-fifth year.



Thirty people crowded into a room

With stacked chairs like a Sunday School

A table of pamphlets looked over but not bought

A lacquered screen holding court, a century’s junk.

An ivory dial telephone, a bowl of early daffodils

To focus on.



I was the first to read, speaking of James Simmons’ death,

My anguish at the year long silence from his last letter

To the Christmas card in Gaelic Nollaig Shona -

With the message “Jimmy’s doing better than expected.”

The difficulty I had in finding his publisher’s address -

Salmon Press, Cliffs of Moher, County Clare -

Then a soft sad Irish woman’s voice explained

“Jimmy’s had a massive stroke, phone Janice

At The Poet’s House.”





I looked at the letter I would never end or send.

“Your poems have a strength and honesty so rare.

The ability to render character as deftly as a painter.

Your being out-of-fashion shows just how bad things are

Your poetry so easy to enjoy and difficult to forget.

Like Yeats. ‘The Dawning of the Day’ so sad

And eloquent and memorable: I read it aloud

And felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle

An unflinching bitter rhetoric straight out

Hence the neglect. Your poem about Harrison.



“He has to feel the Odeons sell

Tickets to damned souls, that Dante’s Hell

Is in that red-plush darkness.”



Echoed in Roy Fisher's letter, “Once Harrison and I

Were best mates until fame went to his head.”

James, your ‘Love Leads Me into Danger’

Set off my own despair but restored me

Just as quickly with your sense of beauty’s muted dance.

“passing Dalway’s Bawn

where the chestnuts are, the first trees to go rusty,

old admirals drowned in their own gold braid.”



The scattered alliterations mimic so exquisitely

The random pattern of fallen conkers,

The sense of innocence not wholly clear

The guilt never entirely spent.



‘The Road to Clonbarra’, a poem for the homecoming

After a wedding, the breathlessness of new beginning.

Your own self questioning, “My fourth and last chance marriage,”

Your passionate confessions of failure and plea for absolution

“His thunder storms were in the late night bars.

Home was too hard too dry and far the stars.”



You were so urgent to hear my thoughts on your book

And once too often you were out of luck,

Heath-Stubbs nodded his old sad head.

“Simmons was my friend. I’d no idea he was dead.”

Before I could finish the poem John Rety interrupted

“Can you hurry? There’s others waiting for their turn!”

I muttered to my self, but kept my temper, just...



Eventually Heath-Stubbs began - poet, teacher, wit, raconteur and man

Of letters - littering his poems with references

To three kinds of Arabic genie

The class system of ancient Egypt

The pub architecture of the Edwardian era.

From the back row I strained to see his face.

The craggy jaw, the mane of long white hair.

The bowl of daffodils I’d focused on before.



He spoke but could not read and

Like me had no single poem by heart.

In his stead a man and woman read:

I could forgive the man’s inability to pronounce ‘Dionysian’

But when he read ‘hover’ as ‘haver’

My temper began to frazzle

The woman simpered and ruined every line

As if by design, I took some amitryptilene

And let my mind float free.

‘For Barry, instead of a Christmas card, this elegy

I wrote last week. Fond wishes. Jeremy..’



“So often, David, I still meet

Your benefactor from the time:

her speedwell-blue eyes, blue like yours,





with recollection, while we talk

through leaf-fall, with its mosaic

mottling the toad-spotted wet street.”



I looked at Heath-Stubbs’ face, his sightless eyes,

And in a second understood what Gascoyne meant

“Now the light of a prism has flashed like a bird down the dark-blue,

At the end of which mountains of shadow pile up beyond sight

Oh radiant prism

A wing has been torn and its feathers drift scattered by flight.”

 A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE.

ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS.
A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT,
CANON-REGULAR OF SAID JODOCUS-BY-THE-BAR,
YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE, _Virgilius._ 
AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG 
AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALES. GAVISUS
ERAM, _Jessides._

(It would seem to be a glimpse from the
burning of Jacques du Bourg-Mulay, at Paris,
A. D. 1314; as distorted by the refraction from
Flemish brain to brain, during the course of
a couple of centuries.)

[Molay was Grand Master of the Templars
when that order was suppressed in 1312.]

I.

PREADMONISHETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.

The Lord, we look to once for all,
Is the Lord we should look at, all at once:
He knows not to vary, saith Saint Paul,
Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce.
See him no other than as he is!
Give both the infinitudes their due---
Infinite mercy, but, I wis,
As infinite a justice too.
[_Organ: plagal-cadence._
As infinite a justice too.

II.

ONE SINGETH.

John, Master of the Temple of God,
Falling to sin the Unknown Sin,
What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod,
He sold it to Sultan Saladin:
Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there,
Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive,
And clipt of his wings in Paris square,
They bring him now to be burned alive.
[_And wanteth there grace of lute or
clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm
him who singeth---_
We bring John now to be burned alive.

III.

In the midst is a goodly gallows built;
'Twixt fork and fork, a stake is stuck;
But first they set divers tumbrils a-tilt,
Make a trench all round with the city muck;
Inside they pile log upon log, good store;
Faggots no few, blocks great and small,
Reach a man's mid-thigh, no less, no more,---
For they mean he should roast in the sight of all.

CHORUS.

We mean he should roast in the sight of all.


IV.

Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith;
Billets that blaze substantial and slow;
Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith;
Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow:
Then up they hoist me John in a chafe,
Sling him fast like a hog to scorch,
Spit in his face, then leap back safe,
Sing ``Laudes'' and bid clap-to the torch.

CHORUS.

_Laus Deo_---who bids clap-to the torch.


V.

John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged,
Is burning alive in Paris square!
How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged?
Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there?
Or heave his chest, which a band goes round?
Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced?
Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound?
---Thinks John, I will call upon Jesus Christ.
[_Here one crosseth himself_


VI.

Jesus Christ---John had bought and sold,
Jesus Christ---John had eaten and drunk;
To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold.
(_Salv reverenti._)
Now it was, ``Saviour, bountiful lamb,
``I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast me!
``See thy servant, the plight wherein I am!
``Art thou a saviour? Save thou me!''

CHORUS.

'Tis John the mocker cries, ``Save thou me!''


VII.

Who maketh God's menace an idle word?
---Saith, it no more means what it proclaims,
Than a damsel's threat to her wanton bird?---
For she too prattles of ugly names.
---Saith, he knoweth but one thing,---what he knows?
That God is good and the rest is breath;
Why else is the same styled Sharon's rose?
Once a rose, ever a rose, he saith.

CHORUS.

O, John shall yet find a rose, he saith!


VIII.

Alack, there be roses and roses, John!
Some, honied of taste like your leman's tongue:
Some, bitter; for why? (roast gaily on!)
Their tree struck root in devil's-dung.
When Paul once reasoned of righteousness
And of temperance and of judgment to come,
Good Felix trembled, he could no less:
John, snickering, crook'd his wicked thumb.

CHORUS.

What cometh to John of the wicked thumb?


IX.

Ha ha, John plucketh now at his rose
To rid himself of a sorrow at heart!
Lo,---petal on petal, fierce rays unclose;
Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart;
And with blood for dew, the bosom boils;
And a gust of sulphur is all its smell;
And lo, he is horribly in the toils
Of a coal-black giant flower of hell!

CHORUS.

What maketh heaven, That maketh hell.


X.

So, as John called now, through the fire amain.
On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life---
To the Person, he bought and sold again---
For the Face, with his daily buffets rife---
Feature by feature It took its place:
And his voice, like a mad dog's choking bark,
At the steady whole of the Judge's face---
Died. Forth John's soul flared into the dark.

SUBJOINETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.

God help all poor souls lost in the dark!


*1: Fagots.

O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight! 
Shutting with careful fingers and benign 
Our gloom-pleased eyes embower'd from the light  
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine; 
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee close 5 
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes  
Or wait the amen ere thy poppy throws 
Around my bed its lulling charities; 
Then save me or the pass¨¨d day will shine 
Upon my pillow breeding many woes; 10 
Save me from curious conscience that still lords 
Its strength for darkness burrowing like a mole; 
Turn the key deftly in the oil¨¨d wards  
And seal the hush¨¨d casket of my soul. 

 It was Karl Shapiro who wrote in his ‘Defence of Ignorance’ how many poets

Go mad or seem to be so and the majority think we should all be in jail

Or mental hospital and you have ended up in both places - fragile as bone china,

Your pale skin taut, your fingers clasped tight round a cup, sitting in a pool

Of midnight light, your cats stretched flat on your desk top’s scatter

Under the laughing eyes of Sexton and Lowell beneath Rollie McKenna’s seamless shutter.



Other nights you hunch in your rocking chair, spilling rhythms

Silently as a bat weaves through midnight’s jade waves

Your sibylline tongue tapping every twist or the syllable count

Deftly as Whistler mixed tints for Nocturnes’ nuances or shade

Or Hokusai tipped every wave crest.



You pause when down the hall a cat snatches at a forbidden plant,

“Schubert, Schubert”, you whisper urgently for it is night and there are neighbours.

The whistle of the forgotten kettle shrills: you turn down the gas

And scurry back to your poem as you would to a sick child

And ease the pain of disordered lines.

The face of your mother smiles like a Madonna bereft

And the faces of our children are always somewhere

As you focus your midnight eyes soft with tears.



You create to survive, a Balzac writing against the clock

A Baudelaire writing against the bailiff’s knock

A Val?ry in the throes of ‘Narcisse Parle’.



When a far clock chimes you sigh and set aside the page:

There is no telephone to ring or call: I am distant and sick,

Frail as an old stick

Our spirits rise and fall like the barometer’s needle

Jerk at a finger tapping on glass

Flashbacks or inspiration cry out at memory loss.

You peer through a magnifying glass at the typeface

Your knuckles white with pain as the sonnet starts to strain

Like a child coming to birth, the third you never bore.



All births, all babies, all poems are the same in coming

The spark of inspiration or spurt of semen,

The silent months of gestation, the waiting and worrying

Until the final agony of creation: for our first son’s

Birth at Oakes we had only a drawer for a crib.

Memories blur: all I know is that it was night

And at home as you always insisted, against all advice

But mine. I remember feebly holding the mask in place

As the Indian woman doctor brutally stitched you without an anaesthetic

And the silence like no other when even the midwives

Had left: the child slept and we crept round his make-shift cradle.



At Brudenell Road again it was night in the cold house

With bare walls and plug-in fires: Bob, the real father

Paced the front, deep in symphonic thought:

Isaiah slept: I waited and watched - an undiagnosed breech

The doctor’s last minute discovery - made us rush

And scatter to have you admitted.



I fell asleep in the silent house and woke to a chaos

Of blood and towels and discarded dressings and a bemused five year old.

We brought you armsful of daffodils, Easter’s remainders.

“Happy Easter, are the father?” Staff beamed

As we sat by the bedside, Bob, myself and John MacKendrick,

Brecht and Rilke’s best translator

Soon to die by his own hand.

Poetry is born in the breech position

Poems beget poems.

 Reading the menu at the morning service: 
- Iced Venusberg perhaps, or buttered bum - 
Orders the usual sex-ersatz, and, nervous, 
Glances around - Will she or won't she come? 

The congregation dissected into pews 
Gulping their strip teas in the luminous cavern 
Agape's sacamental berry stews; 
The nickel-plated light and clatter of heaven 

Receive him, temporary Tantalus 
Into the Lookingglassland's firescape. 
Suckled on Jungfraumilch his eyes discuss, 
The werwolf twins, their mock Sabellian rape. 

This is their time to reap the standing scorn, 
Blonde Rumina's crop. Beneath her leafless tree 
Ripe-rumped she lolls and clasps the plenteous horn. 
Cool customers who defy his Trinity 

Feel none the less, and thrill, ur-vater Fear 
Caged in the son. For, though this ghost behave 
Experienced daughters recognize King Leer: 
Lot also had his daughters in a cave. 

Full sail the proud three-decker sandwiches 
With the eye-fumbled priestesses repass; 
On their swan lake the enchanted icecreams freeze, 
The amorous fountain prickles in the glass 

And at the introit of this mass emotion 
She comes, she comes, a balanced pillar of blood, 
Guides through the desert, divides the sterile ocean, 
Brings sceptic Didymus his berserk food, 

Sits deftly, folding elegant thighs, and takes 
Her time. She skins her little leather hands, 
Conscious that wavering towards her like tame snakes 
The polyp eyes converge.... The prophet stands 

Dreading the answer from her burning bush: 
This unconsuming flame, the outlaw's blow, 
Plague, exodus, Sinai, ruptured stones that gush, 
God's telegram: Dare Now! Let this people go!

 You were the one I wanted most to know

So like yet unlike, like fire and snow,

The casual voice, the sharp invective,

The barbed wit, the lapsed Irish Protestant

Who never gave a ****, crossed the palms

Of the great and good with coins hot with contempt

For the fakers and the tricksters whose poetry

Deftly bent to fashion’s latest slant.



You wrote from the heart, feelings on your sleeve,

But feelings are all a master poet needs:

You broke all the taboos, whores and fags and booze,

While I sighed over books and began to snooze

Until your voice broke through the haze

Of a quarter century’s sleep. “Wake up you git

And bloody write!” I did and never stopped

And like you told the truth about how bad poetry

Rots the soul and slapped a New Gen face or two

And kicked some arses in painful places,

And so like you, got omitted from the posh anthologies

Where Penguin and Picador fill the pages

With the boring poetasters you went for in your rages,

Ex-friends like Harrison who missed you out.

You never could see the envy in their enmity.

Longley was the worst, a hypocrite to boot,

All you said about him never did come out;

I’ve tried myself to nail others of that ilk

Hither and thither they slide and slither

And crawl out of the muck white as brides’

Fat with OBE’s, sinecures and sighs

And Collected Poems no one buys.



Yet ‘Mainstrem’, your last but one collection,

I had to wait months for, the last borrower

Kept it for two years and likely I’ll do the same

Your poetry’s like no other, no one could tame

Your roaring fury or your searing pain.



You bared your soul in a most unfashionable way

But everything in me says your verse will stay,

Your love for your fourth and final wife,

The last chance marriage that went right

The children you loved so much but knew

You wouldn’t live to see grown up, so caught

Their growing pains and joys with a painter’s eye

And lyric skill as fine as Wordsworth’s best



they drank her welcome to his heritage

of grey, grey-green, wet earth and shapes of stone.

Who weds a landscape will not die alone.



Those you castigated never forgave.

Omitted you as casually as passing an unmarked grave,

Armitage, I name you, a blackguard and a knave,

Who knows no more of poetry than McGonagall the brave,

Yet tops the list of Faber’s ‘Best Poets of Our Age’.



Longley gave you just ten lines in ‘Irish Poets Now’

Most missed you out entirely for the troubles you gave

Accusing like Zola those poetic whores

Who sold themselves to fashion when time after time

Your passions brought you to your knees, lashing

At those poetasters when their puffed-up slime

Won the medals and the prizes time after time

And got them all the limelight while your books

Were quietly ignored, the better you wrote,

The fewer got bought.

Belatedly I found a poem of yours ‘Leeds 2’

In ‘Flashpoint’, a paint-stained worn out

School anthology from 1962. Out of the blue

I wrote to you but the letter came back ‘Gone away

N.F.A.’ then I tried again and had a marvellous letter back

Full of stories of the great and good and all their private sins,

You knew where the bodies were buried.

Who put the knife in, who slept with who

For what reward. They never could shut you up

Or put you in a pen or pay you off and then came

Morley, Hulse and Kennedy’s ‘New Poetry’

Which did more damage to the course of poetry

Than anything I’ve read - poets unembarrassed

By the need to know more than what’s politically

White as snow. Constantine and Jackie Kay

And Hoffman with the right connections.

Sweeney and O’Brien bleeding in all the politically

Sensitive places, Peter Reading lifting

Horror headlines from the Sun to make a splash.

Sansom and Maxwell, Jamie and Greenlaw.

Proving lack of talent is no barrier to fame

If you lick the right arses and say how nice they taste.

Crawling up the ladder, declaring **** is grace.



 A talented drunken public servant

 Has the world’s ear and hates me.

 He ought to be in prison for misuse

 Of public funds and bigotry;

 But there’s some sparkle in his poetry.



You never flinched in the attack

But gave the devils their due:

The ‘Honest Ulsterman’ you founded

Lost its honesty the day you withdrew

But floundered on, publicly sighed and

Ungraciously expired as soon as you died.



You went with fallen women, smoked and sang and boozed,

Loved your many children, wrote poetry

As good as Yeats but the ignominy you had to bear

Bred an immortality impossible to share.

You showed us your own peccadilloes,

Your early lust for fame, but you learned

The cost of suffering, love and talent winning through,

Your best books your last, just two, like the letters

You wrote before your life was through.



The meeting you wanted could never happen:

I didn’t know about the stroke

That stilled your tongue and pen

But if you passed your mantle on to me

I’ll try and take up where you left off,

Give praise where praise is due

And blast the living daylights from those writers who

Betray the sacred art of making poetry true

To suffering and love, to passion and remorse

And try to steer a flimsy world upon a saner course.