My poems say
What I want to relay
But with ineffectual verbal interplay.
A poet I am not
Of the muse unbegot
Yet I lived through this rhyme
Though it be aesthetic crime.

It is the content of my intent
That will save, if anything,
My intent
From abject horror of the muse -
If she be willing to incline
The rapture of my mood
In her lenient attitude.

As I wane poetic
She seems sympathetic,
To my mania emphatic.
Something is better
Than nothing's loon
Even if I be what it consume
To weave the fabric of my
Acknowledged gloom.

Dated - February 1982