T
Standard
from George Szirtes…
1. There are poems
one feels a certain satisfaction in solving, but then the clues vanish in the
snow and the rest is faultless snow.
2. There are poems
that skip around like stoned goats: now you see me, now you don’t. Zap. Zowie.
They come on goat feet and are goats.
3. There are poems
with pain in their eyes. They haven’t slept for months. They need you. They are
extraordinarily grateful to have found you.
4. There are poems
with wrinkled brows and slow, hesitant hands. They point at sky, water, earth
and suggest you kneel and pray with them.
5. There are poems
that bare their painted breasts. These are my breasts, they declare! I painted
them myself. I am proud, you hear. Proud!
6. There are poems
so drunk on language they keep tripping over. That’s the point, you fool, they
declare as they spill another drink over you.
7. There are poems
that pretend they’re not poems. They smile ironically and ask: Did you think I
was a poem? I am, but not the way you think.
8. There are poems
that are genuinely angry. They grimace, snarl and threaten, but they’re awfully
pally once you get to know them.
9. There are poems
so quiet, so dreamlike, so full of whispers you think they are actually the
ghosts of other poems lurking behind them.
10. There are poems
so desperate for you to like them they keep offering you bouquets as though you
had earned them. You haven’t.
11. There are poems
that are spectacular disasters. They are very expensive. The sets are
wonderful. It’s the make-up artists who win the Oscars.
12. There are poems
that address you as though you were in a lecture theatre. They lose patience
with you and throw their lecture notes at you. You lose them.
