You know as well as I
the music most popular;
which films will rank as must-see,
and what sells newspapers.

But the musician will, searching,
haunt a barren wasteland
where aeolian harps play still
far from booming towers.

And every individual
held in a captive audience
enshrines their own favourite
however obscure the love.

That the spotlight of the day
should sweep rapidly over all,
cruelly directing each eye,
shows how much there is to bury.

You know as well as I
a poem might write itself,
bright colourful sand tumbling
through the ready hourglass.

But those poems that move the heart
-though we have always understood
the glass as hermetically sealed-
into the eye blow those bright sands.

And count the reader who races
to fill an empty shelf or vault
or an empty minute, or head,
as lost to our faithful crew.

That a poem made with love
should stall in unhealthy shadow,
fade as ink from a mottled page,
shows how long the voyage to come.