Don’t ask me
‘DON’T ASK ME…’
Don’t ask me;
I have no recipe
for a poem. You
know the language,
know where prose ends
and poetry begins.
There should be no
introit into a poem.
The listener should come
to and realise
verse has been going on
for some time. Let
there be no coughing,
no sighing. Poetry
is a spell woven
by consonants and vowels
in the absence of logic.
Ask no rhyme
of a poem, only
that it keep faith
with life’s rhythm.
Language will trick
you if it can.
Syntax is words’
way of shackling
the spirit. Poetry is that
which arrives at the intellect
by way of the heart.
-R.S.Thomas
106460
