To a Minor Poet / Hortense Flexner

To a Minor Poet
It is not that you had only one Really good thought. The great survive usually By not more than five — sometimes seven. But they have a way of riding at beauty With a lifted spear, And at truth With a sword; So that they win from these The five — perhaps the seven — Passages by which they live. And you — you said a great many things, And one good one; , But there are no high invisible banners Waving above your words, There is no mist in your throat, And the stars do not choke you.