No Rewards for the Reluctant Ones...

Having read Joyce's Dubliner's as a young man I was always struck by the character of Little Chandler in the short story "A Little Cloud." There was something pathetic and sad about him as he is described by Joyce. I began to think about artists who never materialize because of their reluctance towards failure or even worse their fear of greatness;



How Ever small
(or Little Chandler’s Lament)

Within him was that apparent relentlessness,
yet reluctance, and yearning
to capture life in the written word–
as the Old Masters he read and devoured.

A little cloud within a vast sky...

With shaking hands and spectacles
through Dublin’s dank night, pub mood,
his night-light burned. Perhaps all in vain?

Distraught by that which he had wrought
he sought the songs of Byron.
What was the genius within their thoughts?

Distracted again, by the cries of his son
he re-entered the mundane.
Peering down he read night’s production–
as a solitary tear appeared
he re-read the only line;

"A little cloud within a vast sky"...