To a Minor Poet / Hortense Flexner

To a Minor Poet  (1920)  by Hortense Flexner

from Poetry, September 1920

To a Minor Poet

Minor Poet, by Carlos J. Andreson (1904-1978), circa 1943. Courtesy Tumblr.

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.

This poem is in the public domain