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Elegy For A "Difficult" Poet
". . .who hath done
To thee particularly and to all the Volsces
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness . . ."
---William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act IV, scene 4
respondit Pilatus quod scripsi scripsi
---John 19:22
Your work was (oh, just saying) difficult,
relying, sometimes, on obscure quotation
many from Scriptures---in Latin or Greek
(in languages we do not even speak).
Other lines offered reference and allusion
that often brought your readers to confusion.
And this was (yes, just saying) an insult
to them. These matters of theology,
and sometimes even ancient history,
really do not belong in poetry.
I think they are merely a demonstration
of your pride in your learning---mere conceit:
like that girl Beatrice (some comedy
about her that you read)---so modestly
walking about flaunting her stockinged feet
in your poems (oh, that is metonomy?
something that you expect we ought to know?).
You do that as much as some tired eyes blink.
We read verse to relax and to escape
the troubles in our lives a little while;
not to be manhandled, grabbed by the nape
of one's neck to fulfill your expectation
that while we read we, also, ought to think
(at the same time), putting on a dumbshow
as we plod through your dense, compressive style
to be smashed on it on the very brink
as in some neutron star's fierce gravity.
Starward
[jlc]
