no man, if men are gods

 no man, if men are gods; but if gods must

be men, the sometimes only man is this

(most common, for each anguish is his grief;

and, for his joy is more than joy,most rare)

a fiend, if fiends speak truth; if angels burn

by their own generous completely light,

an angel; or(as various worlds he’ll spurn

rather than fail immeasurable fate)

coward, clown, traitor, idiot, dreamer, beast—

such was a poet and shall be and is

—who’ll solve the depths of horror to defend

a sunbeam’s architecture with his life:

and carve immortal jungles of despair

to hold a mountain’s heartbeat in his hand

e. e. cummings