We are Whitman
and the rest

Basho
Dante
Burns
and Frost

Shelley
Wordsworth
Shakespeare
Blake

Cummings
Stein
Neruda
Keats

Rumi
Milton
Brownings
Donne

all Eliots
and Dickinsons

Homers
Virgils
Williams, too:

we're poetry
of multitudes

alive by any other name
renown without an ounce of fame

our voices versing through the night
to lend some meaning
love
and light.