Most insecure are those, the self-aware:
for all their acts are pointless and they know it,
scurrying like ants on an eclair…
the universe, indifferent, looks askance.
This insecure mode breeds defensiveness
and therefore arrogance, not least in poets
who know their work especially valueless…
even to other ants.
*****
I think we poets, who can be so rude about other people, need to be rude about ourselves occasionally. Not that the universe cares one way or the other.
This poem was originally published in The Road Not Taken – A Journal of Formal Poetry – in Fall 2016. Thanks, Dr. Kathryn Jacobs!
Photo: “Ant picnic” by dmcneil is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Form in Formless Times 
‘Even to other ants’? Absolutely!
Enjoyed this, with it’s apposite photo illustration, and it made me think of James Reeves’s poem ‘Important Insects’, one of my touchstones. If you don’t know it, you can find it here; https://thehighwindowpress.com/2021/10/28/intense-silence-the-poetry-of-james-reeves/ though you have to scroll down some way to get to it.
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Thanks Nell!
Also, thanks for that link: I used to have a volume of Reeves’ work, but the only thing I can find now is his Selected Hopkins.
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This is brilliant. I have often thought the arrogance of (some) poets could be attributed to the fact that society sets no value on their life’s work.
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Reminds me of “The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small” – Henry Kissinger, among others, back as far as Woodrow Wilson. https://ask.metafilter.com/80812/Academic-politics-are-vicious-because-the-stakes-are-so-low
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