(1)
These days I read with more prejudice than pride
I find it
harder to swallow the chalk with the cheese.
I know it’s
been many years since you upped and died,
My dear Byron,
but in my hands are Auden and MacNiece,
And their
letters to you give me pause, and literary peace.
Since I,
being neither Ozyandias nor Don Juan inside,
May spend
my unheroic hours in their words, true and tried.
(2)
Mrs Bennet is more in my image, I confess
As I worry
over the futures of my kids
Wanting
ever more for them, never less
That they might
do what I might have done instead of what I did.
Or Mrs
Tulliver whose children never did as they were bid,
Sitting
among her linens and crockery in distress
Dear George
(not Eliot!), does heroism not swell every mother’s breast?
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