Illustration | Patrick Ignasiak
O Poet! my Poet! your life on earth is done,
The tapping on drums, long since begun,
Lets me sing a song of verses valiant and free,
And helps me write this very inspired elegy;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O you which many generations expand
Help me write sweetened melodies
Great broken buried hands.
O Poet! my Poet! Look how far you’ve come;
And look – for you the praises rain – for you I’ll beat, beat drums!
For you we honour with lectures and laughs – for you the masses mourn,
For you they call through streaking tears, through you great poets born;
Here Poet! dear Poet!
Myself – among many inspired – demands
A lesson in eternal greatness
O broken buried hands.
My Poet does not answer, in deepest grounds he rests,
My Poet does not hear my call, his spirit ran out of protests.
The pen is set down on his desk, a line of ink now dry,
After hundreds of great poems wrote with tears in his own mournful eye;
Exult O writers, and beat O drums!
While I, in mourning, tread these lands—
Which my Poet once did walk
Beside broken buried hands.
