The Poet Who Lost His Pen. Poem by Nweke Emmanuel

PROLOGUE:

Far across the craggy rock
Where shepherds once grazed their flock
Right below the stream of luck
Where there lived once a duck.
That was in the year of high pride 5
When poem’s tempest was on its tide
Then many lived and lied
Just to get on – the poetry’s ride

THE BANQUET:

In those years of fame
There lived a poet who got no name 10
He got no name – for he won no name
He was very fair, lanky and lame.
In this poet’s table people used to dine
With lots of food and many wine
Yet he would sit across the line 15
Looking at their lusts – in pine

THE WRITS:

This meditation was his delight
As such he lived day and night
Waiting for a good day for him to write
So he was cheered with a heart so light. 20
He also read the works of those that wrote
From Dido to Chaucer, and other works of note
He would memorize the texts in a single gloat
When he sits in his leisure under his coat

GRIEF:

Such his illusory of expected fancy was yet unborn 25
Winters, springs, summers came and gone
Then age came to him – and he began to mourn
Because to hold a pen, his hands were weak and worn
So he began to live like one forlorn.
So much he recollected the poems unwritten 30
His youthful fancies- about his life and his kitten
So much he was troubled- and by sorrow bitten
He wallowed in grief and was by misery eaten

ABANDONMENT AND DEATH:

When the many who once enjoyed his banquet so
Saw him in such misery and woe 35
They fled – living him neither friend nor foe
And his wives I seem to forget. Oh!
Their acts now I will tell in true
For he married not one but two
One dead – the other living. Who 40
Seeing his misery, planned of what to do.
So in a gloomy and loony face
She dressed herself in a quilted lace
And fled at night to a distant place
Where she changed her name- to avoid disgrace 45
And lived happily without any trace.

So this poet was left to rot
With no friend – no wife, to bear his naught
Nor a passerby to pen his thought.
So this poet ended in misery as ought 50
And all his poems ended in thought.

Copyright: #10 – ©2015. Adamspoetry.01/04/2015.