I have loved Poetry all my long life. It is impossible for me to name an all-time favourite – though Derek Walcott’s A LETTER FROM BROOKLYN would be a contender. However, there is a poem I consider would be on any list of perfect poems.
Politicians love to praise themselves or arrange for others to praise them. About 3,500 years ago the greatest of all Egyptian Pharaohs, Rameses II, obviously a politician to his fingertips, set up a huge statue to himself at Thebes. It weighed a thousand tons and the inscription on it read: “I am User-ma-ra, ruler of rulers, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, He of the Sedge and Bee, the mighty justice of Re, the chosen of Re. If a man wishes to know the greatness of me, here I lie, let him surpass what I have done.”
