Silence Exile and Crumpets

Which poem should I write? The anguished scream
that makes good propagand for a cause,
changes some minds, makes some opponents pause
to think? The plaintive hardly verbal dream

of language turned to music, words as sound
a string of notes that flows in points of light?
Both can be valid; a true poet might
chose either. For myself, I've always found

that form is what I love, the play of rules
and sense – the rhymes that very often bend
my thoughts away from what I first intend
to something better. Form's a box of tools

with which I change my mind, then speak it clear.
I am most artful when I'm most sincere.