Clive James wrote this poem while he was dying of leukemia and turning out poems by the bucket load.
This isn't a dark poem, but it shone for me today because my siblings had been chatting about our mother.
This is the eighth stanza of nine, and James, despite all his brilliance, is still hoping to make poetry his own.
If he's not confident in his work, you never will be.
And finally a poem, too, must render
Obeisance to the dark where it can shine
As only one more star, for no defender
Of this art, which I still hope to make mine,
Denies the overstock we're buckling under.
Yet the compulsion lives. Shaping a line
To mark the shock of recollected thunder,
I stitch the lightning into my design
Read the whole poem here.