Thomas Blackburn
Homage to Shelley
By walking near the edge he learnt to go
Upright and safely from the chilly draft
A rock-edge gathered from the gulfs below;
It was those gulfs made clear it would be daft
With death behind him and at each elbow
To slacken the attention to his craft;
By walking near the edge he learnt to grow.
It was the narrowness that made him free.
How could he on a route so difficult
Attend to those who wished to come and see?
Mary took from her mate her Frankenstein
Though critics chose to let that great dog lie—
The route was his vocation and his cult
And left no time for 'human' sympathy.
Upon its rocks he sweated out the guilt
Appropriate to mere common treachery,
For, after all, the others were his route;
It was the narrowness that made him free.
It's years ago. Why should we now defend,
Since now we know it was necessity,
Such conduct to a lover or a friend?
The fruitfulness of inhumanity
Is that it breeds love, loving not at all,
And has a kind of selfless selfishness
That can't be pinned down to a category.
Causing distress, it makes out of distress
Some further reach of thought, some cavity
Through which the range of feeling may extend
Clean through the ages and their gravity,
Another shoot of green, a further frond.
poetrymagazines' note: Reproduced with kind permission of Carcanet.
Page(s) 238-9
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