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.