Daljit Nagra

           Hardly worth calling them out, the old masters.            Each time a cause gains ground, should their estate            become glass house to alleged misdemeanours?            Their body of rhyme can be felt, it propagates            its own lineage. Should we read poems from a cave,            half-witted by the missing forefather? I stand before            the compressed volumes of verse across my shelves:            who covered their tracks, who’ll outlive their flaws?            Who’d topple the marble of some national bard,            or gulag their name and the chela guarding them?            How many writers, the world over, are behind bars            for crossing a border of taste? It seems natural to harm            art and the artist. Consider Larkin whose private views            were amiss, who, if akin to his father’s brown shirt,            who, if published by Old Possum's who laid rats on Jews …            and I’ve lost myself, and the Work is no longer the work.            If influence imparts bad genes, who to weigh in the scales            of my nurture? Weigh Chaucer who forced a minor            into raptus? Weigh Milton mastering tongues to bate            his women like a whip? Weigh Coleridge pairing the horror            of Othello’s wedded stares to those of a black mastiff?            Weigh Whitman and Tennyson who’d cleanse by skin?            If Kipling says we’re devils, may I weigh the man of If ?            How do I edit the Frost-like swamp I’ve swilled –            so many poets to recycle either side of this fireplace            before sweetness and light. Before I’m woke, in tune            with the differentiated rainbow and its crying flames.            Should I calmly cease their leasehold if they’ve abused            the canonical fortress? Or ride a kangaroo court            on its flood of Likes? Take down each Renaissance Man            to his manhood? But I hear the poems breathe: We can’t            be judged by our birth, or judge our birth as Parnassian.            And you, dear Derek. Your Adam-songs for an island            sparked paradise from sanderling, breadfruit. Your spade            dug the manor and bones fell up. The senate columns            fanfared your arrival. They donned a black male            and colour was virtue. You opened my mouth and verse            came out. Your advocates cleaned your mess, their arms            held down the age, as though gods roamed the earth            to graduate girls. As though rape were the father of art.            You were 'Dutch, n____', Brit, you were my Everyman!            Why take on Caliban’s revenge? Your moustache            a broom wedging its stanza of nightmare – in how many            Helens? Did you lust after lines inspired by whiplash,            taunted by sirens for your Homeric song? Intellectual            finger-jabbing seems off the mark: in the papers            Korean Ko Un’s erased, and who’d fly to a terminal            if it was named for a serial pervert, Pablo Neruda?            I bet they hunt the dark man, Derek, in pantheon death.            Haunted or wreathed – how should you be honoured at            Inniskilling? Well, it seems fitting you fall in the West            where you carried 'our' burden. Beside the foul spot,            I’d test my love again. You are in me: I’d never lose            you, if I tried. I’d begin with these, your old books, anew.            Now where on my shelves are you, travelling through            the old world? Where’s your dog-eared Don Juan?