28 OCTOBER 1966, Page 27

Another Poet

An appalling absence of talent, And yet there's no pain When you close the Collected Works You will never open again.

Not even funny; but brave. What the wise and foolish said He ignored equally. Persistence And courage are not discredited.

`I am finding my voice,' he wrote, Labouring, saintly, amazing. He loved the poems and memories That he was paraphrasing.

Virtue is solid, the things We actually do are symbolic only : Should he have played bridge, Or fished, or sat lonely?

JAMES SIMMONS