Yes. We spend too much of our short lives
chasing the mot juste, that phrase, that image,
re-working narratives of fact into (un)heroic
self-justifications. Nobody can reconcile
the contradictions of experience;
we fail all round to bring another’s pain to mind,
we seek to ease the pain and to make amends
but there is no end to the ways of art.

We must learn to wonder as we search
for that elusive butterfly, the truth.
Is that the right word to express 
that fleeting sense of something
far more deeply interfused
that we are dimly aware of
when happy or stoned or in love? 

We have our home in the setting sun
in majestic music and in the mind of man.
Words have many uses: some tell many scorching
lies. We use them to create many, varied identities.

We depend on the soul of the language to see us through.
English is not melifulous like Italian or French.
nor is it gruff and haughty like German or Russian
It suits our variegated purposes. 
We have no need to be told: Les fleurs du mal reposent sur nos esprits
Comme un brouillard humide et toxique.
We know all about the pea-soupers of old London town.

Or, maybe, it is just our gothik worship
of the self that erodes the sanctity of the word.
We neglect our language at our peril.
Language is the explicit and implicit
Foundation of our culture, our way of life.
English connects us the Latinate and Anglo-Saxon
However, a new and dangerous breed of censors
Have weaponised mediocrity, robbed language
of its vicarious vitality, its visceral contradictions
cancelled, to make a lack of offence a stinking virtue.

Do not tell us what we can and cannot say or write or think
Poets create sentence by bloody sentence,
Word by bleeding word. 
The unknown is brought to measure, as we see
into the heart of things….

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