Self-confidence contentment resolution
These are questionable characteristics
Yeats lamented their absence among the best
He who savored aristocracy of the blood
And aristocracy of the spirit
And consorted with Ezra Pound damned near the worst

Have I damaged my own poetry
With mention of holocausts and my own defects
Perhaps I should have limited criticism
To criticism hiding behind literary form
I probably should have managed some
Literary form I mean

If you can’t write well you shouldn’t publish
But then self-publication doesn’t qualify does it
And only a blockhead would write except for money
But the excellence of Dr. Johnson’s style
Vastly exceeds the import of his sentiments
And there are more compulsions in the world than lucre

And more obsessions
With tribe
With gender
With achievement
With reception
With all the million desirables outside one’s reach

No man or woman ever was self-made
Let’s cancel our subscription to comfortable myths
Perfection of the life or of the work
Nobody has a choice of perfections
All do their best
Inequitably distributed by blind indifferent chance