'(But often we all do wrong)'

 Born on this day in 1902 was the one-of-a-kind poet and novelist Stevie Smith. Patrick Kurp marks the anniversary, and celebrates Smith's very particular gift (quoting Kay Ryan's typically spot-on analysis), over on Anecdotal Evidence.
Here are Stevie Smith's 'Thoughts about the Person from Porlock', the one whose interruption allegedly prevented Coleridge from completing his opium-inspired 'Kubla Khan' –

Coleridge received the Person from Porlock   

And ever after called him a curse,

Then why did he hurry to let him in?   

He could have hid in the house.

It was not right of Coleridge, in fact it was wrong   

(But often we all do wrong)

As the truth is I think he was already stuck   

With Kubla Khan.

He was weeping and wailing: I am finished, finished,   

I shall never write another word of it,

When along comes the Person from Porlock

And takes the blame for it.

It was not right, it was wrong,   

But often we all do wrong.

*

May we inquire the name of the Person from Porlock?   

Why, Porson, didn’t you know?

He lived at the bottom of Porlock Hill

So had a long way to go,

He wasn’t much in the social sense

Though his grandmother was a Warlock,   

One of the Rutlandshire ones I fancy   

And nothing to do with Porlock,

And he lived at the bottom of the hill as I said   

And had a cat named Flo,   

And had a cat named Flo.

I long for the Person from Porlock

To bring my thoughts to an end,

I am becoming impatient to see him

I think of him as a friend,

Often I look out of the window

Often I run to the gate

I think, He will come this evening,

I think it is rather late.

I am hungry to be interrupted

For ever and ever amen

O Person from Porlock come quickly

And bring my thoughts to an end.

*

I felicitate the people who have a Person from Porlock   

To break up everything and throw it away

Because then there will be nothing to keep them   

And they need not stay.

*

Why do they grumble so much?

He comes like a benison

They should be glad he has not forgotten them.

They might have had to go on.

*

These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing,   

I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,

Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting   

To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting

With various mixtures of human character which goes best,   

All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us.   

There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do

Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.

I seem to remember that in Lolita, one of the signatures Humbert Humbert finds in a guest register when desperately pursuing Clare Quilty and Lolita from motel to motel is 'A. Person, Porlock', clearly one of Quilty's little jokes. And Nabokov takes the surname Person for the narrator of his late masterpiece, Transparent Things. 
'Smile, smile, and get some work to do/Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.'