I cry tears of bitter pain and sorrow:
One says you write prose and claim it is verse,
The other asks, is it only autobiography?
And one more accuses me of just recording
Good observations, nothing poetic whatsoever.

I think of that Quarterly with Keats,
And of Shelley’s passionate defence —
Where is my Adonais? but I should die first!

Separately, my verses, like Basho’s haikus
Undergo more revisions.

Last week on tour in Delhi, I read
Modern Indian poetry, searing lines like
‘Splashes a handful of moonlight over her body’
And had to confess white spaces between my words
Look and sound more poetic than my words.

Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/blank-spaces/