Leave to Speak
—Premier Poets & Poor Poets—
They said the portal yielded unto all.
It yielded.
No herald challenged lineage or attire;
No statute, legible to mortal eyes,
Preferred one utterance before another.
Thus I believed that language, like the sun,
Acknowledged neither pedigree nor purse.
Then ordinance became horizon.
One poet spent the whole inheritance of breath,
His every constellation finding heaven,
His river consummating in the sea.
Another learnt the jurisprudence of
Curtailment, till omission counterfeited choice.
I buried not my words, but their leave to exist.
A father reached.
I forfeited the touch.
The tide arose.
I repossessed the wave.
Dawn entered.
I dismissed the sun.
The folio accepted all—
Save that whereby the whole became itself.
They praised restraint.
None elegised the harvest left unreaped.
Half of my poem survives only as the
future tense of grief.
Thereafter I discerned the selfsame order
Beyond the province of the written page.
Justice proclaimed one balance for us all;
Yet some departed carrying judgment home,
Whilst others bore procedure in its stead.
No canon sanctified the heavier purse.
It proved sufficient that accommodation
Should wear the countenance of equity.
So too with song.
Some never learn the sorrowful exactitude
Of amputating dawn
Until the fragment passes for the morn.
Even my unwritten stanzas have
learnt the etiquette of exclusion.
Therefore commend not these for austerity.
The truest cadence stands beyond your reading.
Some poets publish every word they write.
Some publish every word they are permitted.
The silence after my last line
knows the remainder by heart.
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a
Premium Membership.
