aubade: a note on the text

Originally subtitled "a song of mo(u)rning," aubade works a sequence of sequences to fill out into an eventual whole. The question the publisher asked, do poems within themselves and beside each other need to have a formal consistency? A reasonable question, certainly, but still. It was an argument, supposedly, that George Bowering had with his McClelland & Stewart editor(s) in the early 1970s as well; do pieces need to be streamlined to exist properly in a book? In the case of aubade, I think not, given that each section exists within itself, and rules apply between sections. Where might be single quotes in one, might be double in the next, or exist not at all in a third; and does it mean that every line therein is borrowed? Does it even matter?