I have been examining my Web statistics for the past year or two today
and must express some bewilderment. I dont see my poems as being
particularly good but I seem to be getting the equivalent of 4000
books read a year. Which is more than the total print run I have
had in my life. There is something strange going on here. All I
can think of is that there is a lack of readable poetry on the
Web and that people turn to me in frustration. I have just looked
through my books, which were emotionally driven when being written,
and see much clumsiness which would have been smoothed out by a
professional editor. I have been baffled by my readership for two
years now and would be delighted if somebody could explain where
all these readers appear from. I just happened to be early on the
Web lark as my work was already on disk and easily transferable
to HTML, which was done in the WEb's beginnings. So my name may
have got around verbally. But all it reveals to me is that there
is a paucity of poetry on the WEb with an audience eager to snap
it up. It is all very puzzling. Nobody has yet been able to provide
me with any sort of an answer. Here is an above-average poem I
plucked out as demonstration:


Theocritus at Alexandria
 
Where does it come from Where oh where
The words flow forever tapped from some deep lair.
 
I cannot remember.
I have forgotten the smell of the byre;
The suck of nozzles at the cow's teats,
Descending milk turning the face of the cooler white,
I hear it no longer.
The silence at mid-day in the olive grove
As Pan rests from his hunting,
I cannot remember the silence across the narrow valleys.
Cos and Sicily are gone from me.
I am too old. Older than Philetas.
 
Here I sit in this Library
Waiting for the committee meeting
Where we will continue to classify four hundred years.
When I came to this city
I was the golden boy of the Western world.
My little bucolics opened all doors.
Philadelphus bought my tongue.
Now I lose faith in my Doric,
Imitate Apollonius in fun,
Why can't I remember Sicily.
 
I am just one among many
Too old now to suffer Daphnis' fate.
I sold out for the easy life.
I write nothing now that's worth a damn.
And these pretty Egyptian boys
They don't want to know.
I would be back home again.
But Heiro has no welcome.

The best of me was on the islands.
Forgive me Nicias but that is true.
The walk on Cos when we never wanted to stop talking
And crossed half the island
Only to retrace our steps.
The streams of Sicily sparkling,
Grape-clusters on the vine.
 
I grew up to the Muses,
Singing contests across valleys,
Cattle queuing up for milking,
Sheep and goats.
The real presence of an altar by a pool,
Libations and the sacrifice.
Simple country concerns.
 
Unending classification is not my forte,
I am the poet of the everyday.
Harmony of living in Nature
Friendly to the gods.
I must return to my roots.
Sniff out the smells. Soak in the scent.
Seek hilly landscapes and green fields.
 
I advertise the little local songs,
Spread them half across the world.
That is where immortality lies.
To occupy your earth and people it real
As if it had always been there.
One among many I made the word-hoard
The after-time does not appeal.


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