The Unknown Poet Visits Daniel Brick Poem by Daniel Brick

A Fantasy

Are you surprised to see me? You should -
not be. I have been in your vicinity often,
slipping between sun-shafts, ducking deftly
under moon-shafts, avoiding all this flourishing
LIGHT, which I have conceded to you as my gift.
I have other sources of LIGHT-ENERGY, and imbibe it
the way Li Bai imbibed wine, or in the spirit of
Falstaff promising to addict his sons to SACK
to save them from mediocrity. Yes, mediocrity abounds
in your existence.

Why have I chosen to manifest myself at this moment?
To warn you, Daniel. To warn you that writing poetry
is a curse, but you're just an amateur, so you'll -
never believe me. My time here is wasted. TIME IS
IRRELEVANT TO ME NOW! But so many precious moments
I devoted to it, this curse like you I took upon myself.
I could have been blissfully idle instead of pursuing
this curse, this fool's errand! It never made me happy,
I couldn't escape its hold on my mind. I was born to it.

You are no more than an amateur, you could let go
in a brief breath of denial, and BE FREE! But you,
you, you want the bondage to language I grew to abhor.
You want the ambiguous meanings, you want the restless
soul-states, you want the poet's life as if it were
some higher purpose of existence. Pah! Fie upon it!
Cut yourself loose before POETRY becomes a faculty
of your very body and soul. It's the Damocles Sword
hanging by a weary thread. It will fall and slice you,
slice your image, cut gashes in your soul, you will
see the LONG VISION - again and again. It only leaves
you with a dry heart, a dessicated mind, and an imperilled soul.

My only happy years were the six years
I was married to Anne Crofton, and I wrote
for her my six verse plays... She displayed
one after the other with such open joy
that inside me still I feel how helplessly
I loved her, only her. And she absorbed my love,
transformed it into a wondrous calm and depth
in her being, letting it shine forth from her heart
and envelop me in a fully returned love
of all the sweetness and light in the Universe!
And if you were so crass as to ask me what it means
to be parted from her, I would sink into a profane tirade!
So keep your counsel, mortal man, and let me hold my Anne,
the pieces floating, never coalescing into her beauty.
Why do I still have being, and not her? To be damned
is to feel eternally bereft of love, but I must -
not be damned if her face tenderly hovers
on the threshold of trees and rocks
by which we enter our immortal realm.
I will never cross that threshold
and lose that last vestige of her existence.
Perhaps she sees my face in this preternature
we occupy as bloodless spirits, empty souls, just
disembodied memories adrift in a space of longing.

There, Daniel, you now possess my brightest
and darkest secret. I wait here, bitter
and mean-spirited, having tried to usurp heaven
in the form of a mortal woman, and stubbornly
refusing to let go of my only human happiness.

The poetry that remains in me - as if it could
ever be parted from me - lacerates my flesh and
sinews, my soul and spirit, because I refuse
to abandon the love, the woman, the soul-mate
that made me sing and sing and sing....
















































































, no soul
worth