Six and twenty (and some) years ago
Was I smit by a rare and precious thing:
A condition of the mind that,
Like a symbiont, would both enrich and feed off its host.

It is a disease of sound
And marks on paper
And a feel for what is right –
Not absolutely, but for a mind in my mind.

So forth they came – and come:
Bons mots like hauf, and thren
And maltzas, klivbend, ledzibret;
And zatsandfröda, prince of all that’s felt.

Yet more: a land emerged
Of forest, hill and shattered castle;
A river to name it
And a people who love the nobly inept.

And what of me, infected as a boy
By all this glossomania?
Am I a better man of it?
I know not, but I know me more.