A Would-be Augustan Prefaces His Book.

With you, my readers, I'll not be less than frank:                     
I know that, as a poet, I'm at best of lower rank.                      
For those less fussy readers I may fill a gap                                     
but I have never let myself fall into the subtle trap                                                        
of hubristically overestimating my poetic popularity                    
now I've seen my problems with ever growing clarity.
I've come to think, as well, that it's alas absurd                                 
that every limping metaphor and each tinkling word                    
with cryptic and elliptic or clear patterned interplay            
have laid down everything that I have wished to say.
                                      
From my earliest efforts, through my many years                            
to this recent decade, when it at last appears                     
that the once flowing well springs of my inspiration               
are suffering at last from a dreaded desiccation,                          
I have presented my thoughts in their various forms,           
(some rather exceeding acceptable norms).                       
I have played in delight with verses exotic                         
and have even touched lightly upon the erotic.                    
I could have easily been more vigorously blatant                        
making the stories of past loves more patent,                       
speaking at length of firm breasts and thighs                       
and puffing my lines with warm ardent sighs;               
but as I look back in my time of senescence                  
at the angst and the anguish of my adolescence                    
I rejoice: loves that were, seen now, clearly farcical     
were modified by attitudes shaped by the classical.             
The content itself was too often romantic                           
but I found that my penchant for the strictly pedantic     
overruled all the many emotional excesses                          
and so led to one or two minor successes.
                   
Around me my youthful companions and friends              
had all of them followed the latest of trends;                     
Eliot was God, his verse held all promise                       
until, for a few, he was replaced by Thomas;                                   
Auden was always too clever for me,                                               
Day-Lewis and Spender I simply let be.                                            
I had no desire to follow that school                     
though MacNeice was a poet under whose rule                    
I flourished for what was a very short while                         
as I copied his deft conversational style                                                                                          
But when I departed academic surrounds                                   
I discovered that life had more extensive grounds                  
where I could find different sources of pleasure;                  
I lived, without writing, a time of full measure.              
Full years of marriage, with children and wife                                   
brought their moments of joy, their moments of strife.              
It wasn't for years that I took up the pen                       
enthusiastic, beginning to write once again.   
I wrote for myself; I did not seek fame,                           
knowing full well that a great poet's name                                
would never be mine; and  the only attraction                               
was delivering works for my own satisfaction.                                
Others have seen them; some readers applaud                                                 
Where I've managed to strike a resonant chord.  
                                                                                   
Events from which most of these poems have stemmed           
show age that wearied me, years that condemned.                        
Feeling now that I've reached a final hiatus,                                              
no longer possessed by transforming afflatus,                                              
this volume of verse before you I cast;                                    
My best, I believe; and also my last.