Who can say if it is worth the trouble? It is in
the trouble itself that its worth, its truth, is held
to reside: like forcing a clam, or forcing down
an oyster, if you can imagine what that's like.
I won't spare you the sarcasm as I have much
to spare and all the time. It's good to spread.
Globules of currency stifle and digest
the ancient stone heads; take villages; erase
whole children. The spirit starts from its old haunts.
You pester us with this and say there's more -
there is more, to be taken at a pinch. A jab
of prose suffices us: skywriting or the carefully laid
twig or torn leaf marking the track. Safety first,
then numbers, then what? To the bunkers, fink.
---
The first line of this was a response to the blurb on the back of the
collected Prynne that came out a few years ago, in which someone -
forget who - asserts that Prynne's poetry is both difficult and
"worth the trouble".
Dominic
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