Good’s Enemy
What creative effort of noble feat—
Requiring neither toil nor sacrifice—
Embitters ye beyond any entreat,
To craft anew with storied artifice?
Needed, keen talent and keener vision,
To impart Madonna with lips sublime,
Release Dávid from his marbled prison,
Or pen romances with metrical rhyme?
Harken ye not onto Muses divine,
Nor fore’er pursue an ideal palette,
Nor, by critic’s barbs or mob’s jeers, resign,
Thine commissions, thine accords, thine ballot.
To self-loathing or other’s rejection,
Yield not, to good’s enemy: perfection.
-Q-