The Guest of Jarwal Ibn Aws al-Hutayah

Gunn’s mother and Berryman’s father
And any other poets’ parents
Who acted as executioners

Of themselves—to say nothing of all
The poets who did likewise—did they
Share anything but humanity,

Anything to do with poetry?
Is it true, as thought popularly,
Self-harm runs with creativity,

Or is it coincidence, or is
Any life a little more intense
Internally a little more prone,

Enough, to tend to self destruction,
And a little more prone, just a bit,
As well, to wrestle with word angels?

It’s not that poetry hovers near
Many suicides or their children,
But suicide will haunt poetry,

Or at least it seems so recently.
It’s not a theme one finds in ancients,
Among those poets or their parents,

And yet something with dark wings hovered
Even then, so many poets orphaned
Or wretched who wrote of redemption.