For 200 years you've killed poet poor
Systematically, every blood-red day,
With the lies of kindness, the lies of war,
With every acid platitude you say.
You killed him with the true and the absurd,
With all that was about you too, as well,
The rarefied bird, the consummate word,
The edens of praise that held him in hell,
For perfection's but another prison
To keep the blasphemous curr from your door;
The theories of his transcendent vision
Have come like waters swooned upon the shore
From funnier ones where he had no talent.
So Lazarus must rise -- to keep him silent.
