I do not attach much importance to the publication or non publication of my poetry and never have done. Most of it (the published part) appeared five, ten, fifteen or even thirty or more years after they were written. The few recently published in magazines (not all of them new, e.g. the sonnets) owed their fate to Nolini's eagerness and not to my initiative. But the vast bulk of what I have written (long poems mostly) lies on shelf and in drawer, most of it for more than a decade, awaiting either dissolution or an interminable revision or total recasting which at the present rate may well retain them there a decade or two more. But that is my own idiosyncrasy—it cannot be a rule or example for others.
To weep because a glorious sun has set Which the next morn shall gild the east again, To mourn that mighty strengths must yield to fate Which by that fall a double force attain, To shrink from pain without whose friendly strife Joy could not be, to make a terror of death Who smiling beckons us to farther life And is a bridge for the persistent breath; Despair and anguish and the tragic grief Of dry set eyes or such disastrous tears As rend the heart though meant for its relief And all man's ghastly company of fears Are born of folly that believes this span Of brittle life can limit immortal man.
More >>
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.