27 AUGUST 1994, Page 38

Voi ascoltate

(After Petrarch)

If you detect in the stress of my rhythms troubles which pained me and provided copy during my youth — that long instruction in error when I was partly not whoever I've become, how about some sympathy as well as lit. crit.? Perhaps you, too, have been needled into scribbling, and can see why I've hit on a mixed style that shifts between vanities of hope and gloom.

But now it's plain I made myself the subject of jokes in certain sludge-brained quarters — a thought which often leaves me feeling shame.

So much labour, and what's my reward? Shame, and regret, and the floodlit conviction that to try is to botch, or to waste, or to dream.