Against Anger
“The boy asking – in a swing travelling to the moon
through curled ice of the spinney frozen with flowers-
‘The bery old man in the moon, does he wear a beret?’
The poet in the glassy office doorway,
unable to remember the Professor’s Christian name;
and the man I love, in another glass
seeing his looks of delight as an unlikeable face
and his eloquence as a hum, surprised at our prizing,
had such humility I think they cannot be wounded,
their unmeant sweetness makes them a safe place.
Next when I kill them in my heart for harms
I think they do me, and next when am raging,
this remembering, let it save
my mind from the hell-go-round of the grievance-ridden
save the fool turkey-cock into love.”
Taken from : Modern Verse 1900-1950, chosen by Phyllis M Jones, Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press 1940,1941,1943,1955
Indeed possibly a Standard text from TCD/Oxford/UCD… though I am rather unsure of its provenance , being in the habit of picking up poetry books all over and sometimes they form a gift or bequest. Little gems.
Chris Murray 