Frederick Kesner - Letter To A Poet, A Thousand Years Hence

`


I who am dead a thousand years
Who wrote this cribbed and broken verse,
Conveying an envoy of words
To a time and space I cannot course.

I cannot know how you may look
What sort of life you live each day;
If days and places still exist;
If you'd understand all I say.

Do wine and song still entertain?
High finance and romance pursue?
Of virtue wrestling the profane?
Are these still themes of art for you?

What shall we conquer? All seems done
Have all the words before me come?
Man's slow decay must now be done;
Poet's names dead to more than some.

Have you a use for all these words?
Or is this craft among those that died:
Whose echoes of our past are heard
That worn out shoes can still confide.

We may have been friends had we met,
Two fledgling poets raising brows.
Read betwixt my lines when you may,
Apprentice as I do today.

You must be born to some lost time
To comprehend my poem thus far.
We travel through, our paths entwined
And guided by the same bright star.

I'll never set my eyes on you
And neither take your hand in mine;
I leave you with a heart that's true:
Go tell the rest that all is fine.



`\n\nFrederick Kesner

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