"Build your verse a ladder"

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 enters 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.


-- R. S. Thomas