68 Wrong way round

Reading:

Wrong way round

When I try to write poetry
My thoughts come out
The wrong way round.
Rhymes too take time
To get exactly right,
Sense and sound apposite.
For me verbal perfection
Entails hours of correction.
This word here that one there:
‘That’s not what I meant!’
But why do I only know
What I wanted after I’ve shunted
The words a dozen times,
Only to find it when I returned
To the one I spurned
A good half hour ago?

To work in this way 
Is much easier today
Than for our predecessors.  
We are fortunate to have
Computers and word processors. 
Quills and parchment 
Or letters cut in stone or wood 
Made change of mind a disaster.
So did those early masters
Get it right from the start?
Were their first thoughts 
Cogent, meaning be as it should
From the very first moment?
Every line conceived ‘just so’?

Or was it ‘first rough notions
In chalk on slate’ and only later
Fair copies made from a litter
Of scraps long since vanished?
Once put into the right order
The final version then garnished
With some decorative
Flourishes in the border
To complete the fiction 
Of spontaneous diction?
It’s so far back in history
We shall never know.

But even in more recent days
With pen and ink commonplace
And paper cheap, it’s still a mystery
How they did it, even say
Two hundred years into the past.
Take one instance:
Did Coleridge render
His ‘Ancient Mariner’
In a fury of inspiration 
Pitch perfect, despite his haste,
No hesitation or initial gestation
At all? Not change one sentence?
Printed, it looks like mastery
But did he too make do
With scratchings-out, use glue
And scissors for cut-and-paste?
Scholars would probably say so.
But I worry it’s just me that’s slow.