A L E m R TO A WRITER

Rightly you scorned their lofty - brutal - tip To write your book:

Let rip : As if to sound the trumpet took

Mere blast. Not skill in finger, tongue and lip.

Condone it then that I, in turn, demurred (True, all control

Of word Or line is good: but best of all

As men, themselves; not they, by the tailored

Costume) against scanning for cuckoo-clocks. Counting by taps

And knocks. Ti-tum . . . heedless that perhaps

The most pellucid streams gush up from rocks,

Or more, because of rocks. The rhythm is The whole terrain:

No grace On top, no coulter scribing an

Unvarying ripple across a landscape’s face.

So with all catch-words that facilitate

Debate. And so with those who see

All poems as a diagnosing what

Politicians bungle. What men have, they share :

And stultify

Which fact will show Everywhere

Through the true poem’s total flow (No matter what its overt subjects are)

Massive and uninsistent: what it is. Therefore ignore

Their cries Although they yelp. But even more

To keep your proper path, shun those

Who think, merely to pose beside the source Will fill their pot.

Or worse,

Unconscious both of origin and course. Sip, and pronounce, it’s good, it’s not,

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