Lucía M. Polis The Poetry of

What use is the defensive stance to man?
One crouches like a snail or stands like wood.
What purpose to be gained in mending fence?
All things must pass, and none are quite that good.
What use is wasting breath on being right?
One makes the body small and backs away.
What purpose to be gained in rhetoric?
All things are heartache, sullen lachrymæ.
What use is talk, or writ, or page, or word?
One is as mute as if one’s fully gone.
What purpose to be gained from constancy?
All things must be destroyed, unmade, undone.
If I am gone, but all my work remains.
Please reimburse my widow for my pains.