Once More, with Feeling

From our old friendship 
I never thought I’d ever remember again
How a whole tribe, such a strange group 
To me and maybe no less strange to you, 
Adopted you. 

                                  But one of that tribe, 
A professor and, according to him and others
Over there (which shows how far our land has fallen),
A poet, called you “my prince.” 
And I ask myself what you ever did that he 
Could have come to think of you as his prince. 

Academic claptrap? His writings are full of clichés 
And conventional thinking. But his rapturous rhetoric 
Does nothing to clarify our understanding 
Of the mystery in your work, even though he’s also called 
A critic of our contemporary poetry. 

The appropriation of you, which you wanted 
Nothing to do with when you were alive, 
Is what now seems to me so utterly strange. 
The prince of a toad? Isn’t it enough 
For your countrymen to have killed you? 

And now stupidity succeeds the crime.