Michael Blumenthal: I Think Constantly of Those Who Were Truly Great

and, to be perfectly honest, it bums me out.

So many great ones! —libidinal heroes,

idealists, warrior-chieftains, revolutionaries,

fabulists of all sorts, even the great Irish pig farmers

and Armenian raisin growers —and who,

I ask myself, am I by comparison? Calmed

by Valium, urged on by Viagra, uplifted

by Prozac, I go about my daily rounds,

a quotidian member of the quotidian hierarchy,

a Perseus with neither a war nor a best friend,

and sink to the depths of despair

on the broken wings of my own mundanity.

If only some god had given me greatness,

I surely would have made something of it—

perhaps a loftier, more humble poem than this,

or some übermenschliche gesture that would reveal

my superiority to the ordinary beings and things

of this world. But here I am now, one of

the earth’s mere Sancho Panzas, leading

those heroic others through the world on their

magnificent horses, merely turning the page, dreaming

my own small deeds into their magnificent arms.

"I Think Constantly of Those Who Were Truly Great" by Michael Blumenthal, from No Hurry: Poems 2000-2012. © Etruscan Press, 2012.