The Authorized Version
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                               THE AUTHORIZED VERSION

  Tired, said the author, and looked down at his open quite empty hands. A yellow-beaked 
bird eyed him without interest from the table. It’s not like it used to be - it was better writing 
poems, complained our former poet.
  Yellow-beak jabbed forward. It begins with poems, it said, all the stories start with waves 
and  particles of rhythm. In the first days there were poems. You make poems sound like 
nursery  rhymes, the defender of verse declared. ‘Ding dong bell’ - returned yellow-beak - 
Sprung rhythm equals high poetic culture. Sophomore, snapped poet.
  Yellow-beak’s black-button eyes watched without emotion as the twin halves of poet 
struggled to re-unite on the floor. Okay, gasped the author, breathless, regaining his feet, You 
win - poetry can’t take the strain. But what about this? - he continued - waving his arms at the 
grimy room - It’s drab, it’s dull, I can’t stand it.
  Beginning with nursery rhymes and fairy tales, the bird professed, Human life progresses to 
awareness of self  and of others through the development of sympathetic imagination. For 
this we need, not the high-tension flashes of lyric verse, not the audio-visual bombardments 
of film, not the mindless beauty of music, but the quiet persistence of prose.
  Thanks for the sermon,  moaned man to bird. It’s too much like work,  he groaned. The laws 
of thermodynamics, hummed the bird. Exactly, I hate them, protested the anti-physicist. 
Become a fifth columnist, you’ll like that, suggested black-button eyes.
  Oh I like that - become a traitor - what a career move, sneered the loyal scribe.
  Okiedokie then, chirped the bird, call yourself  The Resistance.
  I’ll think about it, our hero conceded.
  You’ll go on? asked the feathered comforter.
  All right, I said, but later, I am tired.
The bird disappeared from print without a further word and I sat in my room alone.
  But why tell stories, I asked the bird in my mind.
                                                Because of  the terrible fact, it replied.