Incongruity, Pause, Clarity

Be a true poet, tablet on your knee,
Searching for what doesn’t exist, but still
Managing to discover where it lies.

The serious poems, whatever their form
Or effortful ignoring of known forms,
Tend to suggest the architectonics

Of chamber music, with balanced movements
Contrasting emotional registers,
Then earnest, fierce, dark, or soft conclusions.

But life has a Roman sense of humor,
Happy to have the poets play the fools
Subjected to ridicule and pratfalls,

Also violence, enslavement, and rapes.
Posthumous reputations, too, are shaped
Not like string quartets but jokes. Start absurd,

Establish an odd incongruity,
And then wait for clarity to arrive.
Be glad, poet, you can’t come back to life.