Gavin Ewart
Sonnet: Wise Sir Bowgentle
‘Although he smiled, his eyes were fearful and his
face had aged much since Hawkmoon had last seen
him - wise Sir Bowgentle, the philospher-poet.’
- Michael Moorcock, The Mad God’s Amulet.
He sounds a genuine phoney - to use an old-fashioned term.
It’s not good for poets to fancy themselves as philosophers
(one reason why Auden was the best English poet since Pope).
Tennyson did himself a lot of harm by pondering;
the bromides of the Chorus are not the highspots of Greek Tragedy.
Politics too can bemuse the adept versifier.
Pound really believed he could have stopped Pearl Harbor
if he had gotten to the Japanese poets in time.
When the Bard, the Singer, is stuck there in front of the microphone
he makes mood music; he can’t solve things for always -
all he can give is a certain amount of pleasure.
There still is an actual something we like to call Reality,
not much affected by our pretty words,
that mocks us with its Woody Woodpecker laugh.
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