… ‘What was it Chaucer

said once about the long toil

that goes like blood to the poem’s making?

Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,

Limp as bindweed, if it break at all

Life’s iron crust. Man, you must sweat

And rhyme your guts taut, if you’d build

Your verse a ladder.’

‘You speak as though

no sunlight ever surprised the mind

groping on its cloudy path.’

‘Sunlight’s a thing that needs a window

before it enters a dark room.

Windows don’t just happen.’

R.S. Thomas (1913-2000).