The Last Poem I Came To Poem by Shalom Freedman

The last poem I came to
Was not my own-
It came from other voices elsewhere
And had a thousand broken signatures written in it -
It was all my reading and all the voices of others I had heard-
It sounded like a mess,
And it frightened me by its mixed- up- ness -
But I have been reading and listening too long
The voice was of the others
But it had become mine also-
And now when I try to sound like myself
I hear them calling me by their own lines and names
And writing these words as I write them.