Farewell, My Muse
Inextricably twinned, we’ve come a long way,
you and I. And yet, just like the soul,
a muse, however much it has to say,
can’t be identified; part of the whole
man. Though now a tattered kind of thing,
battered by critics, baffled by neglect,
you pick me up my pen when on the wing
and force me shape new poems I don’t expect,
flapping the old excitement I once felt
when lifted off in flights of fresh creation,
before I learnt how reputation dealt
out fashions to deflate exhilaration.
Though for the moment we may seem to lose,
who knows what pleasures years ahead may choose?
