That Tennyson

“That fucking Tennyson.”
           I caught myself muttering
as I walked along. “Yes,
that fucking Tennyson,
           he can organise a sunset
and flake gold better than I can:
and Emily Dickinson,
           with her yellow children
           at the bars of a gate
closed by her sodding dominie in grey.
And Yeats!  That fucking Yeats
wags an ageing tongue at creation
and leaves me standing -
           in the gyre of a gimbal,
           things falling apart,
as they are always bound to -
stone-cold naked, alone.”
I reminded myself, walking along,
           in the teeth of a song
           by Robartés.