Louis MacNeice (1907 – 1963)
Poet and playwright of Northern Irish birth.
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Then twangling their bibles with wrath in their nostrils
From Bonehill Fields came Bunyan and Blake:
"Laredo the golden is fallen, is fallen;
Your flame shall not quench nor your thirst shall not slake."
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
When they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
My treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
My life when they murder by means of my
Hands, my death when they live me.
It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.
It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.
Some on commission, some for the love of learning,
Some because they have nothing better to do
Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden
The drumming of the demon in their ears.
In my own prejudice .. I would have of a poet...whose worlds would not be too esoteric..fond of talking....capable of pity and laughter..appreciative of womem..involved in personal relationships...susceptible to physical impressions'
Politics: distrust all parties but consider capitalism must go.
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the clubfooted ghoul come near me.
O early one morning I walked out like Agag,
Early one morning to walk through the fire
Dodging the pythons that leaked on the pavements
With tinkle of glasses and tangle of wire.
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