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.
Rose, I have loved thy beauty, as I love The dress that thou hast worn, the transient grass, O'er which thy happy careless footsteps move, The yet-thrilled waysides that have watched thee pass. Soul, I have loved thy sweetness as men love The necessary air they crave to breathe, The sunlight lavished from the skies above, And firmness of the earth their steps beneath. But were that beauty all, my love might cease Like love of weaker spirits; were't thy charm And grace of soul, mine might with age decrease Or find in Death a silence and a term, But rooted in the unnameable in thee Shall triumph and transcend eternity.
More >>
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.