PRAISE SINGER
(to Nadine Gordimer)
All the blood-polluted seas of history
and daily tides of sour dismaying news
that we dilute with sugared slimes of fashion
have not yet sluiced away Earth’s loveliness.
Easy to find for praising is grandeur
of deserts, mountains, oceans, living forms,
the moon and constellations.
Cloudscapes and beetle-patterns, stones,
children at play who dance an undesigned
pavane, can catch the breath.
But there’s another kind of excellence,
not bestowed by Earth or chance or God,
but earned on purpose - then, rarely, attained
in acts and works of human hands and minds.
These the chancy justice of posthumous time
may well, or not, call to remembrance
and accord consensual praise.
But while the authors live, their present gifts
lie all too readily neglected., dully wasted
through our taste-corrupted ignorance
and hourly rubbish-cluttered time.
Or worse, we turn on them blind-folded with our vanity,
or deafened to them by our envy’s noise.
Your own gifts have been nobly honoured,
yet there’s one I think has not been sung
or sung enough:
I mean your passion to confess
your admiration for the mastered word,
the philharmonious prose you lift in praise
of late and living peers
who offer us soul sustenance, largesse
in art and vision, and their truths’ defence
of humankind’s humanity.
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