On Discovering the Poetry of Ebenezer Elliott

The river shares its course incontinently, for fate,
And as the softest rock erodes at its eager rate,
I was first taught Hardy, then Wordsworth and muse, his kin.
Not being taught yet learning of Celia Dropkin
Erodes a harder rock anterior to schooling,
Whence then a waterfall descends, which never pooling
In prejudice is callow in liberation's lock.

My didactic Hippocrene assayed to erode rock
In an artist whose work I had previously bought,
And I made my investment unsafe, because I taught
By wheedling. Had that artist investigated my
Poems cheerfully, without my testament that I
Exist, he might not have given Bowie a hooked nose
In his new gestural portrait that otherwise owes
Little to his flight to evade my political
Freight.