November Poetry - part I

For the past month this blog has been dormant as a consequence of my thesis work. I have now handed in the thesis to the Department and await the defence in medio December. I'm nonetheless trying to keep up four posts a month, and to achieve this I'm going the easy route: poetry posts. The first one is Geoffrey Hill's second sonnet from his cycle An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England, printed in Tenebrae, 1978.


II) Damon's Lament for his Clorinda, Yorkshire 1654

November rips gold foil from the oak ridges.   

Dour folk huddle in High Hoyland, Penistone.   

The tributaries of the Sheaf and Don

bulge their dull spate, cramming the poor bridges.

The North Sea batters our shepherds’ cottages   

from sixty miles. No sooner has the sun   

swung clear above earth’s rim than it is gone.   

We live like gleaners of its vestiges

knowing we flourish, though each year a child   

with the set face of a tomb-weeper is put down   

for ever and ever. Why does the air grow cold

in the region of mirrors? And who is this clown   

doffing his mask at the masked threshold   

to selfless raptures that are all his own?