Let Us Go Then, You

The Business Of The Poet Is Not To Find New Emotions, But To Use The Ordinary Ones And, In Working Them Up Into Poetry, To Express Feelings Which Are Not In Actual Emotions At All.

The Pekes And The Pollicles, Everyone Knows, Are Proud And Implacable, Passionate Foes; It Is Always The Same, Wherever One Goes. And The Pugs And The Poms, Although Most People Say That They Do Not Like Fighting, Will Often Display Every Symptom Of Wanting To Join In The Fray. And They Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Until You Can Hear Them All Over The Park.

That Is Not It At All, That Is Not What I Meant, At All.

Trying To Use Words, And Every Attempt Is A Wholly New Start, And A Different Kind Of Failure Because One Has Only Learnt To Get The Better Of Words For The Thing One No Longer Has To Say, Or The Way In Which One Is No Longer Disposed To Say It. And So Each Venture Is A New Beginning, A Raid On The Inarticulate With Shabby Equipment Always Deteriorating In The General Mess Of Imprecision Of Feeling.

In Spite Of All The Dishonour, The Broken Standards, The Broken Lives, The Broken Faith In One Place Or Another, There Was Something Left That Was More Than The Tales Of Old Men On Winter Evenings.