That Sweet Flute John Clare

A poem by Mary Oliver

That sweet flute John Clare;
that broken branch Eddy Whitman;
Christopher Smart, in the press of blazing electricity;
My uncle the suicide;
Woolf, on her way to the river;
Wolf, of the sorrowful songs;
Swift, impenetrable mask of Dublin;
Schumann, climbing the bridge, leaping into the Rhine;
Ruskin, Cowper;
Poe, rambling in the gloom-bins of Baltimore and Richmond--

light of the world, hold me