(no subject)

 Byronic

(after Wendy Cope)

25/08/2020 MBaluch

I used to think all writers were Byronic – and it’s true

Plotted lives are altered when they roam a room

Madness, life and magic alike flicker in their eyes

They bend the rules, and snap them into new shapes

They amuse. They alarm. And sometimes they disarm

With sudden tendernesses.

Alcoholics, junkies, hedonists, philanderers, lacking sanity and stableness

Nonetheless their table manners are impeccable, polite.

Dance til dawners, last to leave a party, fond rememberers.

I used to think all writers were Byronic – and it’s so

They complicate the characters they encounter and they know

Secret things they’re not supposed to know

Sometimes they are more like starlings, sometimes crows

Whither they wander, you will notice, it will show

In stories left behind them on the lips of those they knew.

I used to think all writers were Byronic - and it’s true.