Part 60

What can a poem do – not even a page long
(a little more if the poet refuses the gift of
brevity)? How do we dress poem-soldiers in

verbs and rhyme and hyphens and dispatch
them to the frontlines? Look at what rises
so tall against us. What words will act as

armour, what words will be weapon enough,
what words will keep a heart so brave it
can look the darkest dark in the eye? In

the Warsaw Museum, on large banners, I
read poems by young resistance poets. This
then is eternal poetry, still carrying the horror,

the anguish, the courage, the humanness of
that age. Forever soldiers. Forever poets. Poetry
that reminds, shocks, shouts, whispers. That

connects people, histories, hearts and poets.
Look then at the privilege of the ordinary that
allows me to write my colourless poems. No

magenta rage, no cobalt conviction, no crimson
circumstance, no billowing orange despair.
Ordinary poems about ordinary days, grey

pigeons and pallid skies, ashen self-pity and line
after monochrome line of mundane mediocrity.
Poems that taste of bile. Of an inertia that

stretches long and undefined. Poems like tepid
beer. Like days that have forgotten themselves.
Poems not brave or sad enough to cry. That

evening by the Vistula, I traced the contours
of my formless quiet into yet another faded,
anaemic poem. A train rumbled by, unnoticed.

(Warsaw, Poland)