I neither deserve mercy nor
Do I often want it. Lie to me
At midnight or before
And set my patience free.
No small amount of grace
Is cast on fires to quench them
So throw fear into your pace
And let a story stem
From the friction in your fingers
Faster than fire is hot.
Ancient poets linger
In a rhyming word, though not
A word cast carelessly down
Dripping from the pen
And smearing gold around
Like money is the end
Of lyric. No, the bard
Wants substance more than beat.
If emotion's too hard
Then let it take a seat.
Let stand the rhyming tale
And let its people plead
To be released without fail
That their faces put to seed
The beauty of the rhyme
In song, in myth, in wish.
Mercy, burn the time
And let the poet finish.
postscript
Rome wasn't built in a day. Or as Virgil might have agreed, "this poem wasn't built in a day."