Critics Nightwatch

Once more he tried, before he slept,

to rule his ranks of words. They broke

from his planned choir, lolled, slouched and kept

their tone, their pitch, their meaning crude;

huddled in cliches; when pursued

turned with mock elegance to croak

his rival's tunes. They would not sing.

The scene that nagged his sleep away

flashed clear again: the local king

of verse, loose-collared and loose-lipped.

read from a sodden manuscript,

drinking with anyone who'd pay,

drunk, in the critic's favourite bar.

"Hear the voice of the bard!" he bellowed,

"Poets are lovers. Critics are

mean, solitary masturbators.

Come here, and join the warm creators."

The critic, whom no drink had mellowed,

turned on his heel. Rough laughter scoured

his reddening neck. The poet roared

"Run home, and take that face that soured

your mother's lovely milk from spite.

Piddle on what you cannot write."

At home alone the critic poured

gall on the poet's work in polished

careful prose. He tore apart

meaning and metaphor, demolished

diction, syntax, metre, rhyme;

called his entire works a crime

against the integrity of art,

and lay down grinning, quick, he thought,

with a great poem that would make plain

his power to all. Once more he fought

with words. Sleep came. He dreamed he turned

to a light vapour, seeped and burned

in wordless cracks where grain on grain

of matter grated; reassumed

his human shape, and called by name

each grain to sing, conducting, plumed

in lightning, their obedient choir.

Dressed as a bride for his desire

towards him, now meek, the poet came.

Light sneaked beside his bed. The birds

began their insistent questioning

of silence, and the poet's words

prompted by daylight rasped his raw

nerves, and the waking world he saw

was flat with prose and would not sing.