Wednesday, February 13, 2013

A Lesson From Life?

It's like jazz; sometimes you play the wrong note, but you play it fortissimo, and maybe it's the right note:


Lines Written At the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum (John Clare)

What I do is for me, for that I came
In a world full of worry, I am to be defamed
I am mine own sound, but mine sound is not the same
Because a hazel wood fire permeates my brain

I long for scenes where men hath never tread
As my doctor, Fenwick Skrimchire, once said
“After years of poetical prosing,” the present insanity ensued
I live among the ignorant a man hungry for food

Disheveled I wander in the quickening maze
East of me, winter, west of me, winter days
I stumble like a chariot hitched to a crippled blaze
Into the world’s own chaos half-crazed

With constructed meaning, with the simple earth’s delight
I am mine own museum vacant of mine own sight

Keith Dunlap

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