Henry,
thank you so much for that detailed reading.
You say the poem seems to work anyway for most readers, but this poem appeared on "Mastery" in the context of puzzled responses that characterised the meter as "chaotic" or "satanic" - so I don't know if this one does work with any reading.
I agree with you on everything you say except the tets - to me it all fits well in 3s.
Many of those lines you are reading as tet, I would read as having virtual feminine endings - which I have hyphenated here:
a SECond-time
his GREY-eyes
on the DARK-stair,
In this line, I would elide the first four syllabels, like this:
B't'only'a HOSTof PHANtom LISTeners.
Which is how we would say it in the flesh - "b't'onlya" with the first major accent coming with "HOST".
Yes, I take your point questioning the longer lines, which do, at first, give the appearance of the ballad form. Maybe he just wanted this visual impression of a ballad on the page? I am not sure.
But I really don't think we need anything but tri-lines here.
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Mark Allinson
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