Wisdom or Wonder
“…if Homer and the poets…had knowledge of the truth when they wrote, and could defend their words in conversation, they would deserve to be called lovers of wisdom.”
~ Penelope Murray, Plato on Poetry, 11
Put up your hand if you think what we want
From poets is ability to talk
About their work—and not for them to haunt
Us with harsh beauty, or for them to stalk
Our minds and hearts with unexpected ghosts
Who live more scorching meanings than we do.
Put up your hand if you want talk show hosts
To drill a poet with a prying view
To search discoveries of sex and seed
Behind the rhymes as if a poet’s heat
Before he wrote his words would fill our need
For prophecy, as if sex could compete
With words that pulse forever in a line.
Do you want chat or diamonds for your spine?