I love poetry,
the craft or sullen art *
the Welsh bard wrote about.
That thing you do
because you must
even though it doesn’t pay the rent.
When the muse enters
without a by your leave
and beckons you: “Come”,
you gladly go with her,
tripping through this gap in time
to other worlds where
colour, sound, shape, scent –
whip your heart to a rhythm of words.
You dance a reel, feel, heal,
and a keel, peel, teal, until
the muse shuts you out,
and the slow time work begins.
Is it too prosaic, too full, too soon?
Have I rhymed enough, too much?
And your worst fear:
Is it trite, tight, a pasty shadow
of what you saw in that other place?
Some will say this and some will say that,
How it came down to earth
with a bump on the page so flat.
but you, who know the craft , the art,
Ah, you hold the truth of it in your heart!
*”In my Craft and Sullen Art “- Dylan Thomas