On Good Authority

Forgive me if I do not understand many of your poems.

In fact, any of them. For I am told on good authority

that they achieve ‘the rich complexity of actuality’

and that you are a poet ‘of luminous curiosity,

confident in melding myth with redemptive ambiguity’.

The fault then must surely lie with me.

For I lack the confidence and curiosity

to clamber over the wire fence

surrounding your complex actuality.

Without a torch, I would lose my way,

and in the melding myth of the compound

risk being torn to pieces by Cerberus,

or falling into the pit of redemptive ambiguity.

Forgive me.