We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.

Staring us in the face is the desperate plight of the poor. We don't need statistics to tell us that. They are flesh and blood people like ourselves, often out of work, forced out of rented premises, without money and without food.

Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.

So, Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism