Time's Fool

"You are about to hear a thousand words
you won't believe, my friend."

Glyn Maxwell's book--four hundred pages long
In quiet but exquisite terza rima--
May be the strongest, most ambitious work
Written in English in that form since Shelley.
Its tone is light and conversational,
Its rhythm smooth and easy, its plot strange,
Its premise clever and disorienting,
All joined and brought to purpose by a wit
Both philosophical and common sense.
It's a good comedy--but not a great one.
And all its wonderful success reminds me
How pale and commonplace this poem is
Next to that other comedy by Dante,
The one to which Time's Fool alludes, on which
Maxwell the poet still relies, like a quick monkey
Imitating by long study something smarter,
Older, more inimitable, wiser,
Something less animal and more divine.
Time's Fool is good enough to call to mind
The better poem that it tries to be,
But not so good to rival or revise it. B+