You know how it is; an indefatigable bird
Decides 4 a. m. is the very time to pour out
His profuse strain of unpremeditated art
While sitting in the river birch under my window.
There's nothing to do but shrug on a torn robe
And struggle downstairs to try to write.
"Muse!" I say, "there is a poem I wish to make
About Nathaniel Johnson, Samuel's brother,
About whom almost nothing is known except
That he died at 24, perhaps by his own hand.”
"Sorry," the Muse says. She is the very old one,
Filling in for my regular muse, who is on vacation
Wandering in Calabria. The old muse offers me half
Her cheese sandwich. "What of Peter, Erasmus' brother?"
She says. "I can probably inspire a sonnet on him."
I refuse; we compromise on Stanislaus Joyce
Who, she says, used to take her dancing in Trieste.
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