Poet to Poet
Journal Entry

What Makes a Poet?
Many have tried to guess.
Is it a voice
like an aqueduct,
a plain-spokenness to grief,
the hairs of the head
dancing on end,
the blood pulsating
with the voices
of all those who have died,
will die,
and will also be born?

Is it the mellifluous catch
in the throat
that awakens the eyes,
is it in the eyes themselves
or is it something
in the heart?

I think it is pain--
an openness to pain,
so that the slightest leaf
cuts the hand
and the smallest tear
cuts the cheek
like jagged crystal,

so that the world
is a sick infant
and the poet
its mother,
praying, promising
to be good
if only the cure
takes.

There is, of course,
no cure.

Poetry does not cure
the poet
and the poet
does not cure the world.

Usually she catches
the world's diseases
and dies
long before her time.

But against all odds
and all indifference,
another one is born.
The world must have
someone to feel its pain
and speak of it.

The poet is that
mellisonant.


~SAS~