Words are worth a whole world more than money. (Revised)

This book cost me only 80 pence.

It cost Li Po a whole wild life to

                                            write,

Cheap wine staining every folded

                                             page,

The glimmer of moonlight also hinted

                                                  at.

It seems the rarest art, the finest poems

Are seldom worth the price of ink and

                                            paper,

Unless a tycoon buys the manuscripts

And locks them deep inside a concrete

                                             vault.

The fact the poet died while reaching for

                                      the moon,

Or heaving up inside a New York Bar,

Seems to magnify the monetary value

Of words rich in love - in hope - in

                                             grief.

It is the joy of ownership that makes the

                                   tycoon tick,

Not the beauty of the poems, the fine calligraphy,

         the deft strokes of the brush.

Li Po drowned a thousand years before I bought 

                                       this book.

Drunk - he tried to hug the moon reflected in the

                                        Yangtze.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

October 20th. - 21st. 2020.