In a castle on a promontory above a rocky cliff

As the sun sinks down the poets come to carouse and rhyme and riff

Chaucer riding on a dappled horse escorts the Wife of Bath

Johnny Clark smokes with Betjeman who complains about the staff

Shakespeare’s musing in the corner

Working out an obstinate sonnet

Emily Dickinson hides shyly in her cloak and starched white bonnet

Donne, Marvell, and Herbert are getting metaphysical

While e e cummings sips cognac: enigmatic, distanced, quizzical

Eliot lies anaesthetised like a patient on a table

Tennyson thunders sonorously

Dylan Thomas looks unstable

Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley

Share a romantic point of view

As G K Chesterton pats his belly

And John Milton takes a pew

Masefield stares out at the sea all night

To watch the grey dawn breaking

Ted Hughes asks Kipling for a light

And Blake just stands there shaking

And as the storm clouds are edged with rust

And the waves heave up like drunks

The basalt walls are turned to dust

And the castle’s towers are sunk

And the poets’ words come tumbling

In a crashing, tumultuous rush

And the cliffs below start crumbling

And all that’s left is hush