But arresting and exalted in its aim.

Or is your cup habitually brimming

With water from the Heliconian fount?

Then remember the hubristic, the profane and pugilistic

Are the only kinds of poetry that count.

So select a tragic argument, ensuring

The maximum expenditure of gore,

And the epithets arresting, unalluring,

Elemental, will re-echo as before.

But if your bent propels you into fiction,