What Do Poets Want With Gold? Poem by Rey Sanidad

What do poets want with gold?
Are not crusts and old garments better for their souls than these?

Gold is but the juggling rod of a false usurping god,
Engraved long ago in hell with a gloomy stony spell,
Working in the world forever.

Hate is not so strong to sever beating human heart from heart.
Soul from soul we shrink and part, and no longer hail each other
With the ancient name of brother.

Give the simple poet gold, and his song will die of cold.
He must walk with men that reel on the rugged path,
And feel every sacred soul that is beating very near to his.
Simple, human, careless, free, as God made him, he must be.

For the sweetest song of bird is the hidden tenor heard
In the dusk, at even-flush, from the forest's inner hush,
Of the simple hermit thrush.

What do poets want with love?
Flowers that shiver out of hand, and the fervid fruits that prove
only bitter broken sand?

Poets speak of passion best, when their dreams are undistressed,
And the sweetest songs are sung, ever the inner heart is stung.
Let them dream; it is better so, ever dream, but never know.
If their spirits once have drained all that crimson-stained glass.

Finding what they dreamed is divine, only earthly sluggish wine,
Sooner will the warm lips pale, and the flawless voices fail,
Sooner come the drooping wing, and the afterdays that bring,
No such songs as did the spring.