Tuesday, June 2, 2009

whistling in the dark



Another definition of the poet's art and of poetry's place in our lives that I wholeheartedly endorse.


. . . in the wood
Of wandering among wood-hiding trees, where poet's art
Is how to whistle in the dark, where pockets all have holes,
All roofs for refugees have rents, we ought to know
That there can be for us no place quite alien and unknown,
No situation wholly hostile, if somewhere there burn
The faithful fire of vision still awaiting our return.


David Gascoyne, from "The Sacred Hearth", in Selected Poems (London: Enitharmon Press, 1994), p. 153.


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