Poem by the Dutch writer Menno Wigman

MISUNDERSTANDING

This poem will be sad. I do not quite know why

I’m coughing up this secret, but for the past two

months or more the thought’s been haunting me

that poetry is not compassion. Rather an illness

shared with a handful of quite hopeless idiots,

an overcooked complaint that others will find dull

and after dark – it has no powers to heal.

The room is still a room, the bed a bed.

My life's loused up by poetry and even

though I once knew better, I don’t kid myself

when with this heap of print I plague three score

poor readers maybe more, or worse, have two trees felled.