A
POET’S CREED
Oliver
Friggieri
The deep felt scream which in the hue
of the square
remains unheard and silent grows
deeper,
the sigh of a bird struck in the sky
by who and why unknown, the blood
trickling,
the tears of a woman in love pained,
the tears of her husband, a marriage
in the endless goal,
the hunger of the famished, the
sickness of the diseased,
the long trekking of horrified
refugees
approaching the frontier of their own
death,
the defeat of he who fell forever
struck down by the burning shot from
a rifle,
the slaves of views incarcerated
to pay for the alluring sin of their
thoughts,
solitude, the pain, the weariness
of he who walks and stumbles
rising and stumbling again right up
to the hilltop
where a cross and three nails await
him
- grist to the mill to the poet.
To ensure that all he has done he has
done well,
a poet presses words together and
produces fire
burning his hands. A poet removes
words from their place
and wrings them until tears begin to
trickle.
A poet stabs words deep with a blade
until blood ebbs and endlessly
flowing.
If his words possess fire, tears and
blood,
a poet rests his mind and writes on.