HIGHER VOICE

It is no use pretending

That literature can fight back

And re-establish creative life

At the expense of uncreative death.

It can't! It is vastly outgunned and, besides,

A democratic genre like the novel

Has no right to Eternal Life!

Those who still write literature

Are but the tail-end of

An old, predominantly worldly tradition,

And even their star shines less brightly

Than did that of their predecessors,

Since exposed to the fogs of pseudo-literature,

Which inevitably invade their works from within

As well as from without, smothering them

Beneath a welter of complacent claptrap!

No, literature cannot live for ever,

And although in my less-enlightened youth

I once wrote something akin to it,

I would not now attempt to write a novel, finding

Even the reading of one

An increasingly unattractive proposition!

Nor would I bring myself to

The abyss of an antinovel,

With its superficial encomiums

And satisfaction in ongoing materialism,

Its utter indifference to the inner light,

Its horror of genius

And praise for the common herd!

Leaving the antidemocratic to the left-wing automata

Who purvey and peruse it, I proceed

From literature to poetry,

Where the inner voice can once again be heard,

Only this time much clearer

And more intensely than before,

The sole witness to inner truth.

Not, then, the inner voice

Of philosophical literature,

Still less of philosophy,

But the inner voice of poetry,

A spiritual rather than an intellectual voice.

This higher voice of literary poetry

Speaks from the psyche, not the brain,

And what it says will always ring true!