Any Man Speaks Poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

I, after difficult entry through my mother's blood
And stumbling childhood (hitting my head against the world);
I, intricate, easily unshipped, untracked, unaligned;
Cut off in my communications; stammering; speaking
A dialect shared by you, but not you and you;
I, strangely undeft, bereft; I searching always
For my lost rib (clothed in laughter yet understanding)
To come round the corner of Wardour Street into the Square
Or to signal across the Park and share my bed;
I, focus in night for star-sent beams of light,
I, fulcrum of levers whose end I cannot see ...
Have this one deftness - that I admit undeftness:
Know that the stars are far, the levers long:
Can understand my unstrength.


Submitted by Stephen Fryer