'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.


Submitted by Andrew Mayers