When I'm serene, gently searching my mind,
I think of Wordsworth, of jeweled Vale, its slopes,
its stars, its wind and moon.  I picture measures
that drip of poise, shimm'ring with clear design
where unobtrusive function words are sieves
in which caesural thoughts are caught by lines.
Such classicism of form.  But then, the present
pushes himself on me, so redefining
my ink's stance.  Debating whether the culture
of Haydn or that of Schönberg should be
my line's time, jarring my mind with extremes,
I churn the use of meter, constraints of form
with being compact; of using repeats, sequence,
and rhyme with being unique into a batter
of mode.  So I model Coleridge; his voice,
urgent, demands my anxiousness and triggers
a pulse of mute unsettledness.  I wait,
expecting not to expect his next twist
of departure from rhythm.  Taut, the words
are puritans; their clearness commands change,
and from the past, I am the line to be.

-Tsai