WITHOUT THE WHEREWITHALL Poem by Barry Tebb

To Thushari Williams

Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us

Will never be forgotten, the long days you laboured

In the care home, your care-worn comings home

To sit with Brenda Williams, poиte maudit sang pur,

Labouring together to bring to light poems buried alive

And turn them into a book, the living text

Proof enough of your divine gift as muse

And enchantress of both word and screen.

Now in far Indonesia you strive to strike a bargain

With an uncaring world, webmaster with magic fingertips

You engrave the words of us, careworn poets of our age,

In blue and scarlet on a canvas alabaster page.

Simulacrum more real than reality itself,

Should reality exist in cyberspace.

My Prйvert, my Nerval, I never thought to see

So handsomely orthographed, like Li Po scrolled

In Chinese water by a blue pagoda.

Indeed if anyone could write in troubled water

It would be you, my dearest daughter.

Whether this world will grant you a living

Only time's indifference and your subtle craft will tell,

Artists like poets live on other's bounty, as you know so well.