No Place for the Poet

‘No place here for the poet,’ cried the crowd.
‘We have our tin gods and our transient things:
‘What need we of soliloquies,
‘And songs that speak to the soul?
‘We are told how to feel and to follow.’

‘No place here for the poet,” cried the money-lenders.
‘We have but one God in Mammon
‘We are the cult of the coin,
‘And demand only the sacrifice of the heart
‘We cannot sell the lines you pen.’

‘No place here for the poet,’ cried the warriors.
‘We unleashed a monster to catch a monster
‘In the name of the Good and the Just
‘Now we struggle to recage It:
‘We cared too much and paid the price.’

‘No place here for the poet,’ spoke the silent masses.
‘Our emotions sealed our fate.
‘Now, we have castrated our feelings:
‘Now, we are all synonymous.
‘We neither care nor uncare and want for nothing more.”

In the dust of the last day
In the echo of a billion souls
As the last fire embered on the hill
They sat and wept and called for what was lost
And cried: “Where is the poet
“To hold his dark mirror up to us
So that we might see ourselves clearly?”

Yet the poet sang no more.