What Is A Poet? Poem by David Mitchell

What is a poet? a person who writes
And longs to ascend to Olympian heights;
A person who's seized with irregular madness,
Who's joyous when glad and depressed in his sadness;
An enigma, a puzzle; someone who writes well,
Or whose half-rhymed enjambments condemn him to hell;
A poet is someone who finds it his duty
To remark on the world and its natural beauty;
He'll go on about life and our shortness of breath,
He will bore you, the reader, to unpleasant death;
And he hopes you will read him again and again;
But above all, a poet's COMPLETELY INSANE.

(Northumberland, April 2006.)