To Donald Davie in Heaven or wherever

Do they do prose in Heaven?
This man who thought he knew himself
too well, who knew what he could
and could not do, who gave advice
and then got cross when you took it,
who'd be able, maybe, to come up
with an argument to defend as poetry
this chopped up prose ('it depends
where you chop') as it works its way
with more or less energy, articulate
or otherwise, to a conclusion
it cannot, thank heaven, foresee,

returns more frequently now,


this man, of whom everyone
who knew him has their own version
(true of us all, but truest of him
with his urge to set it all down,
lucubrations, tergiversations,
and damn the consequence), would have growled: why in heaven's
name can't you edit the thing
because, when you get down to brass
(with a Barnsley 'a') tacks, poems
are made out of words, as that
very different man, Mallarmé, said.