Jones: When last, if ever, did you speak in verse?
Smith: Like normal speech, like talking to a friend?
Jones: Or when did you last count the rhythm’s flow
To measure out the feet?
Smith: The feet?
Jones: You hear
how odd it sounds to use the terms we use
in papers where we write of poets who
are dead, who have no meaning for our day.
Smith: The foot.
Jones: The great iamb.
Smith: The noble word
which pulses through the language of our veins.
Jones: They say it has a rhythm like our hearts.
Smith: Bullshit! It beats itself to death. It drones
and drones, and only hints at what it means.
Jones: The hint of “that within which passeth show?”
Smith: The “backward masking” used so long ago.