A monument in words

And so I had a glaring revelation,
I couldn’t find the poet in the man although
I read his life composed by writers true disposed
to tell it with veracity. They built a monument in words
and deeds, a shrine of writers’ reeds inlaid with refined
and proper quotes. Those motes were hardly real; I couldn’t find
the poet in the man they wrote, but when I found alone the
man within the Poet reading from his poetry I was replete.

Perhaps they can’t compete these dry and dusty counters
of the grains of sand, there’s more evoked within a ball of
dimpled clay on any day a sculptor lends his hands to shape
a face; I am pleased to read the poet rather than the man
and will not place my future faith in such abstruse scatology.
© I.D. Carswell