The Poet's Job Undone - Fragement Of A Lost Mss Poem by Paddy Scott Hogg

The poet’s role
On the high plateau where armies clash
By deepest night,
Or on the waiting, sitting, bus
Snorting fumes impatient for the fight
Of emptiness,
Where thoughts unbind the day
Or in the lone house where t.v. sounds the knell
Of celluloid friendships to the old
And disconnected, silent contemplate the past;
Are words to waken and enlighten
To lift sad hearts with bliss
To articulate emotions, deep, suppressed
Or maybe felt,
In the bowels of Hell and pain?
At death?
At losing love?
In guilt or gladness?
And all the ways of joy that fall upon the mind?
Is there life, where happiness comes to stay
And inner peace
When calmness rarely comes? -
With the lilly, primrose and the seed
Or the silent walk, by the sea,
Where waves beat time so everlasting
Like gathering lines on foreheads, ageing fast.
Or maybe feelings
When birth explodes a consciousness alive
Upon this only earth of ever blue
Amid the nothingness of everything
Amid the clattering chaos of jubilant fun
The twirl, the twist, the skipping feet
Of Oneness, everything, numbly part of
Yet oft denied,
Hiding from a death that waits
In rapids of absent thought;
We miss the song of glory to this moment and this day;
Revolving all, we do suppress
And run from never-talked of fears.

The poet’s role
Is to kill all things within man
Which diminish man
Whilst uplifting all that makes man good
And tends to happiness;
Never to compromise principles
For career;
Or starve in a shallow world
Broken by despair,
Rather than be a poet
Whose words are spew
A sentimental gush, alone.
Let all be poet’s thus.