The Real Poets Poem by Shalom Freedman

The Real Poets



THE REAL POETS

The real poets are few in number and largely known by name
The rest of us are endless frustration in aspiration
Words upon words upon words
Dreams upon dreams upon dreams
Getting and going nowhere forever unheard

The real poets find their anthologized place
And we know them over and over and over again
The rest of us just appear this only once
If we appear at all
And our words and our hearts and our minds
Do not encompass and inspire the endless rereadings
Time and Time’s Wounds make again and again and again

We are once only always forever losts
Nothing will save us
These words too coming in the wake of a long night’s reading
Of the poems of others
Cannot sustain and redeem
Cannot be what they would be
Cannot help and cannot save
Me or you or anyone we love
Even as poetry.

God Who Knows All
And in the End Decides on Everything
Has made us smaller even than the Angels
And our place in the Divine Song
Is not as far as we know
Anywhere heard at all.

Goodbye world
We are going
We have done what we could
We have written and written and written
Oxymandias’ poet will remain
And we will not
The lone and desert sands will stretch away
When we are not even a single grain.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Shalom Freedman

Shalom Freedman

Troy New York
Close
Error Success