Cocktail

Poetry is no country cousin

poaching from the family table

but a waif crouched on a stairway

bare

It is to life oneself

up to the blade of life

to let it cut, to care beyond

the wound and yet to bare oneslf 

It is to farm one's senses out

and make one's heart

a public vestibule

The art's a veritable tantalus-trap

He who would live poet

let him learn to drink his heaven

with his hell

                            Sister Maria Louise , CHM         circa 1958