An Epigram on Epigrams

 Dick Davis, one of our finest living poets (and translators), has always published sparingly. If and when his complete poems are published – and they really should be – they will not make a fat volume. Davis favours short forms, including epigrams. Here is one of my favourites – 

On Epigrams

This neat, egregious house-style
Parades its insights pat, on time: 
It smiles a very knowing smile...
Here comes another fucking rhyme.

(Its doubles entendres are subtle, supple – 
'To fuck' here means, of course, 'to couple'.)

I've written about Davis before – a search for 'Dick Davis' brings up these posts... 

Here, for good measure, is another short poem by Davis (not an epigram) –

With John Constable

Slow-rotting planks and moody skies;
I look with your impassive eyes

Whose tact is love for what is there –
The worked soil and the moving air,

The reticence of grief: I hear
Through silence your dead voice draw near –

Those words you gave to Ruisdael's art,
'It haunts my mind, clings to my heart.'