Prove, Before We Approve Poem by Ananta Madhavan

Strolling in the British Museum one day in London,
I paid silent homage to the manuscripts.
Shakespeare mortgaging his house for sixty pounds;
Kings acknowledging messages;
Love sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Inscribed in a bound notebook,
Slabs of neat autobiography
In the hand and pen of Edward Gibbon.
But I asked myself if the pursuit of the authentic
Was a waste of time? We, the mediocre, can afford it.


In the Egyptian chambers, visitors are agog
To see the mummies in their lacquered coffins.
Death is a sure draw;
Cleopatra was missing.
Immortality of fame is even surer.