Peter Porter
On Being Burned in Effigy
Raging impotently on the 178
leading Avant-Garders who despise me
and the 23 ½ Celebrities who ignore me,
I found compensation imagining
a universal vindication, Conferenced
and Web-Sited circa the third decade
of the 21st Century, establishing me
as the subversively erudite reviser
of True Tradition among the lemming
cohorts of Experiment (noted in the TLS
in one reminted poem of Augustan ease –
the discoverer commending my wise
and ludic love of soft adjacence...“who
but he would meld his phrases so -
icon tours as eye contours") -
this black meditation, comforting perhaps
on cold blocked mornings at my desk,
seemed suddenly not merely crying to the wind
but ultimately less consoling than
a real remembrance of having been burned
in effigy once in Dublin by a group
of disgruntled English poets drunk
on Guinness and lifelong neglect.
leading Avant-Garders who despise me
and the 23 ½ Celebrities who ignore me,
I found compensation imagining
a universal vindication, Conferenced
and Web-Sited circa the third decade
of the 21st Century, establishing me
as the subversively erudite reviser
of True Tradition among the lemming
cohorts of Experiment (noted in the TLS
in one reminted poem of Augustan ease –
the discoverer commending my wise
and ludic love of soft adjacence...“who
but he would meld his phrases so -
icon tours as eye contours") -
this black meditation, comforting perhaps
on cold blocked mornings at my desk,
seemed suddenly not merely crying to the wind
but ultimately less consoling than
a real remembrance of having been burned
in effigy once in Dublin by a group
of disgruntled English poets drunk
on Guinness and lifelong neglect.
Page(s) 14
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