Some people think
Being a poet
is standing up
in a room filled
with people eager
to hear words
written on paper
who applaud what
they hear while
we shuffle the paper
in our hand
to read the next
poem in the pile.
This is not a poet.
This is a monkey,
a seal, trained
to perform for treats.
Chögyam Trungpa said
to Allen Ginsberg
“Why don’t you
write your poems
on air like Milareppa?”
That is the challenge.
Of course such
a poet, such a
really great poet,
can never be published.
It is said
there is no
money in poetry.
In really great
poetry there truly
is no money.
But then there
is no poetry
in money nor
in winning the applause
of the herd.
–Reg Hartt
Two Tramps in Mud Time
-
- by
-
- (1874-1963)
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I knew pretty well why he dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of beech it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.
A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And fronts the wind to unruffle a plume
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.
The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheel rut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.
The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an axhead poised aloft,
The grip on earth of outspread feet.
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.
Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps.)
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax,
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right — agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes.
“A great artist lets himself go. He is natural. He swims easily in the stream of his own temperament. He listens to himself, he respects himself. He has a deeper fund of strength to draw from than that arising from rational and logical knowledge…The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleeper to shake the complacent killers of the world. He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, shows the world its present and points the way to its new birth. He is at once the product and the preceptor of his time….In a world terrified of change, he preaches revolution – the principle of life. He is an agitator, a disturber of the peace, quick, impatient, positive, restless and disquieting. He is the creative spirit of life working in the soul of men.”—Dr. Norman Bethune.