The Burial of the Dead

Ford Madox Ford.
Ted Hughes!
his old lady
and her oven shoes
writing in their London flat
where she poetically sat
listening to the news
with Ezra Pound
and Dorothy,
who slipped underground:
he to Venice
stressing clarity
& musical words
absent disparity.
Robert Lowell.
Robert Frost!
at St. Elizabeths
at any cost
at any hour
giving the inmate
a special flower.
James Joyce
had no choice:
he always wore glasses
to see
language and brilliant infinity,
while Marianne Moore,
went quietly approaching her door,
but no one was there.
and it didn't seem fair
that Edna St. Vincent Millay,
who kissed all lips,
had the softest fingertips
to write sonnets
which the modernists hated
and constantly berated.
they loved Eliot, though,
especially the flow
of The Waste Land:
Pound for Pound
despair
and
The Burial of the Dead is there
stirring the air.