Oh to devise a line that would soar aloft
On the wings of its own magnificence
And would rise above the gaze of the immortals
Who made the page their Kitty Hawk

Those bastards the artists
Who make it look so easy
Tempting the child to emulate their manner
Ignorant of their discipline

And once in a while the inexplicable
The Mozart or Handel
Tossing off masterpieces
Like a candy bar wrapper

Thank heaven for Keats
Who struggled to find a subject
Who struggled with the techniques
Which his lordly rivals wielded like saber

But then he outwielded them all
Sustained only with a love of beauty love of truth
All the while retaining the marks
Of hardscrabble life and education

And Dickinson another anomaly
No development no apprenticeship
An Athena born fully armed
And one golden monument after another

Perhaps then we should look to Blake
He of the golden cage
The prison of eros and poetry
Driven to reinvent the world

And a drive is no choice
And achievement no gift of chance or pale inertia
Look on their works ye puny and despair
And upon the crushing treadmill trudge blindly on