[FOsen]

How pleasant to know of the poet
Who knew suffering and never was wrong
And who wrote so that we, too, would know it,
In stanzas imponderably strong.

How poignant to pick up a ballad
By a wretch who died young or insane
But left, before growing too pallid,
The tome that had teemed from his brain.

One wonders, when reading the love-lorn,
The shut-in, the junkie, the sot,
Or the crank who liked bondage and kid porn,
If such things helped their verses a lot.

But whether or not the words show it,
How lovely to like and not loathe them.
Yes, how pleasant to know each such poet
Or know of, but not, you know, know them.

Frank