It's surely not an honourable calling. I certainly take more pride, such as there is of it, in being a civil servant than a 'poet', much though I admire the best work of the most elegant poets.
I would have liked The Perfect Book to be an end of it but there's an itch. I've got my chess ratings as high as they can be expected to be and want to leave them there unjeopardized for a day or two. I was completely over my brief re-infatuation with football as soon as I woke up.
The NHS has plenty to do without having to provide counselling for people who can find nothing better to do than write poems. I lay there, staring at my gorgeous records and thought,
CD’s
They
said it would have gone by now,
The
music they scanned on somehow
To
indestructible plastic.
I
hoped it wouldn’t go that quick
But
still hung on to my LP’s,
Never
having been of these
That
moves with every passing trend.
Well,
quite. Where would that ever end.
But
now, my dotage immanent
and
embraced like something godsent,
the
music has managed to cling
tenaciously
and surprising
to
media that takes one aback,
as
endurable as shellac
or
vinyl whose carved provenance
was
undisputed evidence
of
the real. Who’s the dinosaur
that
got wiped out. I never saw
the
need for downloads or the sound
of
old LP’s as more profound.
There’s
shelves and shelves and shelves of it
And
all of it is pure profit
That
will last longer, in ruder
Health,
like all that Buxtehude,
Than
I’m ever likely to. So,
Glad
of the mid-range stereo,
The
Clein, Sheku or Isserlis,
Those
that I wouldn’t want to miss,
Will
outlive prophecies of doom
And
ensure that my packed front room
Does
not become, through time’s violence,
A
library of endless silence.
--
It is terrible, terrible doggerel if not a bit metaphysical. None of that matters. I'm sorry if The Perfect Book isn't the last word.