The Man Who Turned Himself Into Poetry by Simon Pettifar


                  
Not true perhaps to say he turned himself.
Rather that poetry seeped and glowed
and leapt and flowed and raged and burned
and ploughed and hoed through him
till he became that which he loved,
a child of poetry true to the child
he carried lovingly in him
through all the years of his imprisonment,
true to his childhood and to that injunction
of Rilke's, proving it and himself,


Until his every utterance became poetry.
Even a photograph of him has this quality: 
A man who leaves no trace, who moves through air
with no disturbance, leaving only
a scent of music, the rumour of
the possibility of peace,
the truth contained in hope.

Inspired by Turkish poet Haydar Ergülen’s essay Poetry of Earth and Sky: The Poetry of Ilhan Çomak

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