What good is Poetry? Why do we need poets? It''s not real. Poetry''s useless etc. .. I try to talk to them about the soul-sickness in them, the dissatisfaction with themselves and the world around them. The running after diversions, drugs, drink, sex...anything to divert attention away from that aching emptiness in them that they won''t admit. They are homesick for a home they have no knowledge of or even image of what it might be like. They feel trapped, because (to paraphrase Rumi), they are "noble birds of the air who have had their wings clipped by an old woman and have been brought up among chickens". They''re not living their own lives. Somewhere "out there" lies a real, fuller, broader life which seems to have escaped them, but which they know exists somewhere. Poetry is a signpost to that place. But it is not "out there" at all.

How to put them in touch with that real living world they secretly long for, the world which cannot be found in history and which is not remembered precisely because it is not yet dead, not yet passed away. How to get them to admit they have all but bankrupted their capacity to be wonderstruck, to be bewildered and enchanted by the world around them. Which is why we never needed poets more than we do today.