Poetry For Supper

‘Listen, now, verse should be as natural

As the small tuber that feeds on muck

And grows slowly from obtuse soil

To the white flower of immortal beauty.’

‘Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer

Said once about the long toil

That goes like blood to the poem’s making?

Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,

Limp as bindweed, if it break at all

Life’s iron crust. Man, you must sweat

And rhyme your guts taut, if you’d build

Your verse a ladder.’

‘You speak as though

No sunlight ever surprised the mind

Groping on its cloudy path.’

‘Sunlight’s a thing that needs a window

Before it enter a dark room.

Windows don’t happen.’

So two old poets,

Hunched at their beer in the low haze

Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran

Noisily by them, glib with prose.