0233 The Blest

The authority on poetry pauses; the world holds its breath. This head – greybeard, skinhead – forehead already lined with self-imposed responsibility for the continuance of the known world, applies itself. The word is, discrimination. The fingers curl like scalpel? like talons? around the ballpoint of the turning world, the keys that tap the dew of mercy or beat the bitter rain of judgment on the poet’s brain somewhere in the world a childish head bent over a desk clutching awkwardly a chewed ballpoint with total absorption summons the unwieldy letters that one day will greet each other in the boundless heart and write the first great poem of a new age beyond all imagining save his or hers nestled in her favourite secret place - look, there she is, where the sunlight catches the leaves at the end of the garden, by the woods – a girl, her head caught in a golden halo of magic, reads a book in a land where time and place have paused to read with her blest are they that give. blest are they that receive.