If, then, the author of the lines beginning ‘The rugged black of anger’ were asked to explain their meaning, the only proper reply would be to repeat the lines, perhaps with greater emphasis: by which, presumably, they would only become more obscure. If the poet were pressed to employ some familiar metaphor or simile to explain them, then he would have to prefix his remarks with some such insult: “At your request I shall make my poem into a bad imitation of itself. I shall, in fact, call this version _your_ poem, the more yours the sillier it grows. But you must promise not to deceive yourself that this is what the poem means. It is rather what it does not mean.” This method of understanding a poem may be called Smoking Out The Meaning. To consider how the meaning may be smoked out here let us put these lines into the first metaphor that occurs to us. Indeed it is not wholly impossible that the first two lines may conceal an incidental satire on the popular poetical sentiment: Look around and you will find Every cloud is silver-lined. The sun still shines Although the sky’s a gray one.... It’s a short life but a gay one. If such is the interpretation suggested by the first two lines, then they are being treated as the prose idea from which the real poem, apparently unwritten, is derived. That is, the ordinary translation system of poetry, thus: (I.) A B C _Poet’s prose idea_ _Poem_ _Reader’s prose summary_ 1. | 1. | 1. 2. | 2. | 2. 3. | 3. | 3. 4. | 4. | 4. is assumed to have been reversed, thus: (II.) A B C _Poem (suppressed)_ _Prose idea as poem_ _Reader’s poetical summary_ 1. | 1. | 1. 2. | 2. | 2. 3. | 3. | 3. 4. | 4. | 4.