Advice to a Poet

When your composing sonnets as you must,
All mad-eyed writing of the obvious
Proclaiming of our fall by hate and lust
With little pity in your heart for us,
Please spare us words of wisdom, force and range
Those dissertations that will crush the mind.
Won't ever comprehend your words so strange,
Our unabelieving hearts are left behind.
No words of fright about a dying race
How can we understand unpeopled earth?
A stoney look upon a boulder's face,
The sun mere fire or autumn leaves have worth?
We can't conceive of things undreamt' they're lost
As dream clouds crumble, flowers black with frost.

You tell us that the white-tailed deer will slip
Within the perfect shade where the grow shy
Or turkey tom avoids the seeking eye
And other things we've seen ourselves and spoke.
Just ask us, poet, how we'll ever call,
Dispelled by rhyming words obscure or broke