Ah but do it for your sake first and foremost. If I can be some encouragement of course, and take encouragement from your successes, I will appreciate that greatly but your success in poetry is important.

[He confesses first off that he doesn't know the first thing about Jehan's poetry, or poetry in general, beyond turns of phrase that he has needed for pamphlets but...regardless of that. ]

As much as I do not know much of what you do, I still know that it is important to others in the world. Do you know, when we were preparing, last spring, I promised myself that no matter what happened when it came to the barricades again, that I would get three of you out? You were among them. Not because I regarded you as less capable in any way but you were one of the three who could use your gifts to spread what was important to the world if we'd done badly. I do still wish I had been able to do that, though I would miss you here. You speak., in general, with poets, you speak the truth in ways a people is ready to hear, or in a way that truth can slip in and catch someone unawares. Your gifts...they have a power. I do wish the republic could have kept that in you.