Into A Small Band Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

Into a small band
We clustered together in the stand
Where the Muse put us:
I, the fortunate,
To make my way amidst so august company
Is there a need as yet
For another ten years, eleven years?
I will move slow at first, through
The first years.
I need not hurry: copy the decade
That went before.
Not in a flurry to sing and versify.
In English
Before two thousand and four what
Had I sung?
But see! What I collected
From the fields of poesy and song:
Though
Desperation upon desperation throng
Into my eyes yet I hold on
And sit successor to thousands of lines.