I am a man now. Pass your hand over my brow. You can feel the place where the brains grow.

We live in our own world , A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge.

Is there a place here for the spirit ? Is there time on this brief platform for anything other than mind 's failure to explain itself?

I have known exile and a wild passion Of longing changing to a cold ache. King, beggar and fool , I have been all by turns, Knowing the body's sweetness, the mind 's treason ; Taliesin still, I show you a new world , risen, Stubborn with beauty , out of the heart 's need .

Verse should be as natural As the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty

I have nowhere to go. The swift satellites show The clock of my whole being is slow.

Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil that goes like blood to the poems 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.