We start with sharpened pencils and a plot
that leads us in a dance we’ve danced before.
We hear the metre ticking. Off we trot,
to come home disappointed and footsore.
I gasp politely as you spring your voltas.
My twists surprise you less and less each time.
We see them coming so they do not jolt us.
(Now “jolt us” — there’s a clanger of a rhyme.)
When poetry persuades itself to sell
a truth; it flops. Let go that dicky bird.
Learn to love, instead, the infidel.
And revel in the tangle, the absurd.
Truths are creatures netted by mistake.
We know them by their slant and silver wake.