"Where have you been, Theodora?," Mrs Goodman asked. "Walking, Mother." "And whom did you see?" Mrs Goodman flung her grammar like a stone. "I did no… - Patrick White

Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of honesty.

In the last couple of years I've been doing this sort of thing constantly, often repeating myself, becoming an avoidable Doomsday bore. But anything of importance — like a garden, a human relationship, a child, a religious faith, even the most convinced brand of atheism has to be worked on constantly if it is to survive.

Poetry resists academic pretension, just as the mystery of religious faith evaporates on contact with dogma.