David Madore's WebLog: Gratuitous Literary Fragment #50 (a poet)

Later on he started writing poetry. He was all giddy about it. Not that he mistook himself for a great artist, and he probably didn't entertain illusions about ever being one, but the sense of possibility drove him on. For once, I believe, he felt he was the master of something he could control, and this surely brought him more of the reassurance he needed than anything I might have done. I remember him coming to me one day with a verse he was unusually pleased of:

Do you despise the earth where cares abound?

I wondered whether I should reveal to him that he had merely misremembered a line by Wordsworth (and not one of the best), but the pleading look in his hazel puppy eyes decided me against it. The dead Poet Laureate would not suffer from the theft, and my own memory—I convinced myself—was uncertain: so I offered encouragement, to see Kevin's face light up. (I did feel somewhat guilty then; but after all, I was making him happy.)

In truth, a few of his poems were genuinely good (never the ones he identified as such, though): they provided a glimpse into a mind laden with doubt, yet spoke of hope for the future, in a manner that was truly moving in its very naïveté. I suppose Kevin's works might have enjoyed a small kind of success in a different time or in a different place. As it was, after his death, all of his papers were to be dumped by his heirs—distant cousins he had hardly known.