The Poet Wearies
I’ve had it with being Your herald.
Everybody has a voice,
why am I the one who has to get on board
with no say about where we’re headed?
Why not proclaim the wondrous woof of looms
Yourself, with that voice that echoes
to the four corners of the earth?
The world’s seen so much progress
and you still insist on traveling salesmen
going door-to-door on horseback.
Check out this jack knife, people,
Take a good look, ma’am, it’s magic:
slices and screws, tweezes and dices –
a whole set of tools in one!
Dear God,
let me work in the kitchen.
I’m not a peddler, or a scribe,
just let me make Your bread.
Child, says the Lord,
all I eat is words.
Adélia Prado, translated by Ellen Doré Watson, from The Mystical Rose: Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books, 2014.
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Published by Anthony Wilson
I am a lecturer, poet and writing tutor. I work in teacher and medical education at the University of Exeter. My anthology Lifesaving Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. In 2012 I published Riddance (Worple Press), a collection of poems, and Love for Now (Impress Books), a memoir, about my experience of cancer. My most recent books are Deck Shoes (Impress Books, 2019), a book of prose memoir and criticism, and The Afterlife (Worple Press, 2019). In 2023 I will publish The Wind and the Rain, my sixth collection of poems, with Blue Diode Press. My current research project, with Sue Dymoke from Nottingham Trent University and funded by the Foyle Foundation, is Young Poets' Stories: https://youngpoetsstories.com/. This blog is archived by the British Library.
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Anthony Wilson 
I ‘liked’ this poem when you shared it as part of this series, but have found myself returning to it repeatedly these past days, which means I need not just click the star but (if faithful to the poem’s implicit imperative?) add my own words. Thank you. I had not heard of Adelia Prado. Now must seek out her work. KB
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