Old Poet

The old poet in my house,

in the years before I found it,
had been someone else
lover, husband, father.

(I suppose)

He faded out (they say),

bereaved and exiled in its rooms,

deserted by love and money,
imprisoned in its empty space,
a bed and a kitchen, a place to write,
a desk and the tools to write with.

The old poet
lived in his house (not mine)
his papers marked
with time and thought;
he wrote and wrote and wrote,
words that no-one else would read.

The crockery of his meals
(unwashed), towered over his days,
and still he filed the blunt refusals
of a world that would not hear.

I found this out
from unfolded pages
and rejection slips
stuffed in the musty drawers
of a desk in the darkened
corner of a room.

I found the list
of his submissions,
as if these were a sign
of his lonely fall from grace,
his song unvoiced into silence,
his words undone.

I did not read them either,
having no eye for poetry
or else afraid that
the death of his expectation,
like his actual death
(like all our deaths),
was the curse
of every inhabited place,
the curse of all the things
we hope for.

© BH, 2021

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Another rework of someone else’s poem posted on Poetry UK FB page. The original explored a scenario of someone finding a dead poet’s work after buying his house.I offered a critique but, having done it, wondered if it was worth reimagining the piece - to see if there was another voice for it.

So I tried and here's my stab at it. Half an hour's scribbling (plus a few later edits), and worth its own desk drawer of solitude for long enough. An experiment, if you will.

Oh, and I toyed with the parentheses as a kind of indicator in the verses where, in the story, the poet (me?) was indulging in supposition of one kind or another. Just a thought; just a device.