The desk is no place for your long distant friends
Who can't ever join you since they are dead,
Sitting on shelves for all time instead,
Watching you squirm with your quivering pen,

In the silent spaces between the chattering words
Of Shakespeare and Shelley like lame caged-up birds,
Your unseen emotions flayed flat on the page,
Broken by quill with a sharp, splintered rage,

Till you pick up Dante who takes you to task,
Looking back and then forward, forgetting the past,
Dipping your pen in a clean well of hope
While Beatrice and Virgil guide you back home.