A Blank Page Poem by ENOCH JOHN

What came you out to see in this wilderness, a reed shaken in the wind, or
A blank page before the poet's muse appends his own ecriture?
How can I change the sombre and melancholy into dancing feet?

What can I write to transform a blank page so that I can stir the world?
Blank leaves ribbed as human hands fall to the brown earth
In the coolness of the autumn and sometimes unnoticed,
And can conceal cadavers that dictators bury in shallow graves.

A blank page remains in the unfinished book of history,
As too an unworked slab of marble cut out of the mountainside,
Patiently awaiting an entry from another Picasso or Auden,
Or the master strokes of another Michelangelo?