Youth - that long instruction in error

Not fond of the poem except for one singular line which makes it worth transcribing.

Voi ch'ascoltate . . .
(After Petrach)
by Michael O'Neill

If you detect in the stress of my rhythms
troubles which pained me and provided copy
during my youth - that long instruction in error
when I was partly not whoever I've become,

how about some sympathy as well as lit. crit.?
Perhaps you, too, have been needled into scribbling,
and can see why I've hit on a mixed style
that shifts between vanities of hope and gloom.

But now it's plain I made myself
the subject of jokes in certain sludge-brained quarters
- a thought which often leaves me feeling shame.

So much labour, and what's my reward?
Shame, and regret, and the floodlit conviction
that to try is to botch, or to waste, or to dream.

From Spectator, 27 August, 1994