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The Only Criticism I Can Comfortably Write
Yes, I prefer Geoffrey Hill's poems over Philip Larkin's:
a Christian, I prefer difficult hope in the midst of easy despair---
permanent hope in the midst of temporary despair.
I prefer this over
temporary blisses or amusements
(strategically deployed to diffuse the fear of death)
in the midst of permanent despair
(with its undiffused, undaunted fear of undisclosed death).
The midst of permanent despair
is a fog on the bright weather of Easter;
a denial of the prerogatives of Christ ("and him crucified");
a disruption of the democracy of the Broad Church,
suborned by the oblong, obligation of uncancelled debt
to the doomed, bedumbed dictatorship of death
and its decomissioned, decomposing grave
deliberately distorted in the reflection of
thrice removed Cousin Samuel's
stately pleasure dome of ancient decree.
Starward
