Writing a Poem Vi

"Give me words, thousands of words, I offer my kingdom for words, for I wish a poem to write. Not any poem but a masterpiece of a poem!" The aspiring Poet shouted, and then in a lower voice added: "Give me: Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, determiners, qualifiers, distributives, prepositions, infinitives, gerunds, participles." "Give me verbs: Regular and irregular, transitive and intransitive, main and auxiliary verbs." "Now give me tenses: Present, past, future, perfect, and conditional tenses. Active and passive tenses included." "Don't forget to provide me with punctuation as well: Commas, colon, semicolon, question marks, exclamation points, hyphen, and full stop." "Hurry up, please, don't just stand there... bring me a chair, a table, and in God's name, paper, many sheets of paper of good quality." " Oh, yes, I almost forgot I need a pen, not any pen but a golden one since this poem is going to remain immortal." Then he paused for a while and continued his monologue: "I am all set. Here I go... I am about to start...... Ready to put down the first line..." .............................................. Nothing happened. ............................. He waited for a few seconds..... Still nothing............................. Not a single word comes to his mind... " What is wrong with me?" He wondered! At that moment, he heard a whisper. He turned around and saw his Muse looking at Him with pity and as she approached closer she said: " My dear child, if you aspire a poet to be, poetry you should approach with awe and not with the arrogance that you have here displayed. Moreover, open your soul's eyes at once to enable them to see the beauty that your mortal eyes fail to perceive! You also have to let your heartbeat follow the rhythm of inspiration which our Lord has put there for all to use, so as the language of heavens to speak which to you mortals as poetry is known! Remember that fancy words alone would never be able to help you with the writing of the poem since it is impossible without the intervention of the divine!" Thus the Muse spoke and quietly walked away, leaving him Behind with: His thousands of words piled up before his eyes, His grammar, His large table, His comfortable chair, His paper of quality, and of course, his Golden pen in hand, which, ALAS, had not Helped him a single word to write! © Demetrios Trifiatis 18 June 2022