Army of Poets

So there are ranks:

major poets look down

at the scrabbling, scribbling fools.

 

They sneer and peer down

from parallel heavens

where each one is at the right hand

of Ovid or Virgil

or anyone whose work

is dissected at

centuries’

and

translatory

remove.

 

Hiederum a hodderum

achna gullick

slay the monster

move to the mediaeval

visionary convective

“Do Well, Do Better, Do Best”.

 

Stratford Bill’s

sonnets stretch some;

others say they’re

much ado about nothing

and dispute not

their authorship.

 

Shelley begat Byron

begat Tennyson

or vice-versa

until we are Dylan

or Thomas fans

by way of Eliot

and Pound.

 

The Somme of all fears

brought Brooke, Sassoon

and Owen; none are minor,

though one made Major,

and there are many other ranks

how fitting that one was Graves.

 

Wor poets arrent War Poets,

wuh speak like Geordie Dunn

and mark the paper wi’

coal dust and lasses’ names,

‘cuz wor pit saved

uz from the jormans

but not progress.

 

But we are Other Ranks,

the enlisted in the The Army of Poets,

we march in time to the meter

or the sound of our own drum,

the special forces smashing the rules

and the shibboleths,

until we finally

write ourselves

into commissioned

glory alongside

the Captains and the Kings.