Thursday 25 November 2021

Irked/Not Irked


I am good at being irked by the world

to such an extent that

I have written about my irked-ness

in more than a few poems.

 

‘Look,’ people will one day say,

when they’ve finally got round

to discovering my poetic output,

‘there goes Fergus the so-called poet,

 

transforming the petty wretchedness of the world

into his little wordy works of art,

one minor irritation at a time!’

And, being me, I would take this as an opportunity

 

to be irked at their presumption

that I was writing about some irky thing or other.

For there is only so much irk poetry

which one may tolerably create

 

before a poem about flowers, or trees,

or the movement of clouds in the sky

makes its unwritten presence felt,

as it struggles to emerge from the nowhere of ideas.

 

Here comes a flock of birds, painted black

on the canvas of today’s blue-grey sky,

heading for the familiar horizon of the Malvern Hills,

a line of poetry more poetic than any I will ever write.

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