born poet, nature's gift
the beauty of god's essence
caught in every bloom and season

the years caught, preserved
in the lines and cracks
of a treasured antique
that never fails to excite a collector

made poet, from him
scholastic verses that trace every
perception, but blurly hits on
their exact sequence

the echo of the poetic self usually
missing - God did not put it there -
a crescent that entrances but
never as much as a glorious full moon

a blindman's quest to tell
the bends and squaring of a lane
after having been led
through it a hundred times

the thinly veiled struggle between
confidence and diffidence
the perceived and the real

the pain to put each
in its proper order the way
nature has done it, minus all
elements of pretensions, or ignorance
that come lose through each written word

a net sieving out the made poet

john tiong chunghoo

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poem-about-poetry-born-poets-made-poets/