Len Webster's 'Poets Of The Thirties' Poem by Len Webster

They thought of themselves as makers of myths,
As splendid young men with hopes for the future.
Like the lost, they searched for heroes and summits
To which tey could, so splendidly, aspire.
And the cost of this was nothing but their ambitions,
The profits and losses of the occasional legacy,
The waves of friends who had read the latest poem or book,
The dull silence of those who did not care, and never would.

Look, stranger, at these corpses now, who have their myth,
Who have their commentators corkscrewing words of fire,
Who have the satisfaction of looking down on students
As the myth-makers themselves were looked down upon,
Patronised by an Old Guard they so much resented.
Their voices are hoarse with crying out warnings
No-one will heed, for poetry, they all agree,
Makes nothing happen.