Well Bottom Blues

An exercise in deliberate old fashionedness

I will be remembered like Hector
only in the lamentations of women.
My brother scholars’ races are all run
and the laurel’s ground into the soup.
I wield only a walking stick to
help me hobble to the library.
The Great Work lies unwritten.
I have digested manuscripts
like sandwiches and still suffer
hunger unrequited. The elusive
kudos of my colleagues escape me.
Great works require an audience.
These scratchy parchments have none.
Scholars now would all be modern.
They’ve lost their one great God
and those of old hold no interest.
They take each other apart in papers
because they cannot find a line
that leads to an original thought.
I linger at this scared desk which does not
resemble in any form Circe’s couch,
and drink the poor wine a scholar’s
salary affords. Old loaves
and cheap meats make my plate
without so much as a bit of mustard.
I push this pen out of habit
while I still have light.