Page 53

The poem treats writing like building a lean-to, insisting that any true climax must rise from grounded structure or collapse under pressure.

Its central metaphor is architectural: line, ridge, support, and ground all describe how a poem or thought must be made. The climax is not a burst of feeling detached from craft but the point held up by everything beneath it. Wind and burial make failure physical, so artistic weakness becomes a real fall rather than a merely technical mistake.

'LITERATURE AND MATERIAL': the line to the climax is 'like the look from the side / on the lean-to', and 'both directions must be built / from the ground / Or the climax or the ridge / will fold / Be it from the mind or from the wind'.

The poem takes carpentry and composition as one discipline, not two compared things - line, climax, ridge, support, and ground describe a poem and a lean-to at once. The structural warning is exact: a climax not grounded at both ends will fold, and the poem makes failure physical with 'Be it from the mind or from the wind', so a weak structure literally collapses. The closing condition, 'Unless your not afraid of falling / with it / Or being buried by it', makes risk the signature of real building - you only get the climax if you accept the fall. The source spelling 'your' for 'you're' is kept as written. The page is unapologetic shop talk that treats craft as a load-bearing subject.