(a trifle)

A poet is a dying thing
A falling thing
A falling star,
Whose gold is urchin on his life
Because his prayers are made of mud,
His brain a crumbling autumn leaf
His soul a flood.

But he will learn – I read it in a book –
The hymn that is a three times holy hymn
Ere all is done;
And fall no more
To make his fire –
The frictive coat of Lucifer
Thus charged itself with fire,
As with an outstretched flinty nail
He gathered sparks from heaven’s wall
As down and down and faster down he fell –
No, he shall merely call
And having called
Be given answer;
And then a glowdrop, sweet and cool,
A brilliance he can’t control,
Shall find his empty mind with soul,
And he will know who is the master.

A poet is an ashes being. Son
Of Man, how shall I know
In digging, when I hit the cornerstone?
You are the builder, I the plaster.
What is a man? You are the answer.