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Thievery in themes
among words and worlds
of thought
and heart:
what's right,
what's not.
And each measured line
written in hasty rhyme
is written and rewritten
and plucked from piles
of your pages,
only with perforations.
Poesy and Piracy are cousins
rooted together in branching affection:
an understanding unspoken,
uttered alone in eyes.
There is not in the world
either malice or matter to alter it,
I think.
I hope.
With inspiration as elusive
as an aging angel,
I anguish as Antigonus
in restless agitation.
Art has never been
so very close;
now it teeters terribly
on the tip of my tongue.
Something so near,
but never mine
because I am only
what I say
and I say
so very little
of what is truly
mine to say.

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Sources:

CAMILLO: Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia.
They were trained together in their childhoods; and
there rooted betwixt them then such an affection,
which cannot choose but branch now. Since their
more mature dignities and royal necessities made
separation of their society, their encounters,
though not personal, have been royally attorneyed
with interchange of gifts, letters, loving
embassies; that they have seemed to be together,
though absent, shook hands, as over a vast, and
embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed
winds. The heavens continue their loves!

ARCHIDAMUS: I think there is not in the world either malice or
matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable
comfort of your young prince Mamillius: it is a
gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came
into my note.

- The Winter's Tale - William Shakespeare

AND

The Ecstasy Of Influence