Oh where is the speech of the sages of old, the cadence of Chaucer, the thunder of Blake?
Now lost in the tap of a finger-grown cold, where words shrink to whispers for brevity’s sake.
No ballads they weave, no riddles they tell, no echoes of Homer or Milton remain,
But stare at the glass of their hand-woven shell, as language lies gasping in shackles and chain.
No lore do they gather, no wisdom they seek, but prattle in phrases as brittle as frost,
For history’s weight is too heavy to speak, and knowledge unprized is but knowledge long lost.
And yet in the shadows of silence and dust, the echoes of sonnets and verses still play,
For though they may slumber, the words do not rust, where one heart still sings, they shall never decay.
The lands, once a chorus, now babble and drone, where Babel's own folly takes root in the ground,
And tongues once united now fracture in stone, their syllables sundered, their harmony drowned.
Yet what care have I for the fate of the throng? A poet needs little, a thought and a pen,
For words, like wild butterflies, flutter in song, and rest on a flower, then vanish again.
So write though the deaf and the heedless abound, let ink etch its mark though no reader be nigh,
For words are but ships, and the sea is profound, and some sail unnoticed, yet still they must fly.
If one fleeting verse finds a heart to ignite, or lingers a moment in soft golden light,
Then silent or spoken, forgotten or bright, oh what does it matter? I’ve had my delight.
(By John Shenton)