THE SLAVE

Give me a poem, I commanded,

For once full of beauty and grace,

Extolling the wonders of nature,

Or just my neighbour's enigmatic face.

But when I put pen to paper,

Split ink turned as blood.

Gloom washed over the pages,

Like the torrents of a flood.

Twas then that I realized,

The fact that had always been,

I'm but a slave to my poetry,

And my yoke, my pen.