Are so often from pages of books

That I have read. Somewhere in my 

Youth or childhood, no doubt, spent

Buried in other people’s words rather

Than  bringing the hills alive springing

About gamboling as a lamb to the 

Tabor’s sound making my own rhythm

And rhyme. Twain’s best thoughts, he said,

Were stolen by the ancients, but mine

Are couched and cast in the impeccable

Words of the wise in my literary past. How

Then should I begin, as TSE asks, in this

Spencerian month of the death of the Bard and 

So many others. It’s a mercy, perhaps, to

Think in more than one language. It’s hard

Enough to have English masterminded by

Bards with songs already sung. What a relief

That my kids are scolded only in their 

Mother tongue.