A rash of poems that had to be written
crossed my desk today
of death, burial and decay,
all from different sources
but perhaps from similar forces —
artistic responses to immediate courses
of human folly
ushering in a deep,
profound melancholy
penned with hope that things
at some point might ameliorate
but with knowledge that courses
often end in destruction and hate.
It isn’t fate, write the poets,
though such courses recur and persist.
Poets’ words will keep pointing
in spite of often being dismissed.
It is the vocation they cannot resist,
and so, a rash of poems was written
and crossed my desk today.