WITHOUT THE WHEREWITHALL

To Thushari Williams

Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us

Will never be forgotten, the long days you laboured

In the care home, your care-worn comings home

To sit with Brenda Williams, po?te maudit sang pur,

Labouring together to bring to light poems buried alive

And turn them into a book, the living text

Proof enough of your divine gift as muse

And enchantress of both word and screen.

Now in far Indonesia you strive to strike a bargain

With an uncaring world, webmaster with magic fingertips

You engrave the words of us, careworn poets of our age,

In blue and scarlet on a canvas alabaster page.

Simulacrum more real than reality itself,

Should reality exist in cyberspace.

My Pr?vert, my Nerval, I never thought to see

So handsomely orthographed, like Li Po scrolled

In Chinese water by a blue pagoda.

Indeed if anyone could write in troubled water

It would be you, my dearest daughter.

Whether this world will grant you a living

Only time’s indifference and your subtle craft will tell,

Artists like poets live on other’s bounty, as you know so well.