Proof of Poetry
I wanted first to end up as a drunk in the gutter and in my twenties I almost ended up there--
and then as an alternative to vodka, to live
alone like a hermit philosopher and court the extreme poverty that I suspected lay in store for me anyway--
and there were the years in which
I needed very badly to take refuge in mediocrity, years like blunt scissors cutting out careful squares,
and that was the worst, the very worst--
you could say that always my life was like a patchwork quilt always ripped apart--
my life like scraps stitched together in a dream
in which animals and people, plants, chimeras, stars,
even minerals were in a preordained harmony--
a dream forgotten because it has to be forgotten, but that I looked for desperately, but only sporadically
found in fragments, a hand lifted to strike
or caress or simply lifted for some unknown reason-- and in memory too, some specific pain, sensation of cold or warmth.
I loved that harmony in all its stages of passion
the voices still talking inside me . . . but then, instead of harmony, there was nothing but rags scattered on the ground.
And maybe that's all it means to be a poet.
Tom Sleigh
Thanks to two_grey_rooms