Parallel Lives

Geoffrey Hill

I
The Quyete of Mynde was a tough home assignment,
but you know that. The style seems to be made
with those like us, stranded and crying out
as brittle things in Virgil and Dante
that when you snag them flock the air with blood
making a mess of anger and lament:
the violent spendthrifts of their own hearts
to whom no quarter is given, no
quality of grace shown. The harpies have them.

II
The leathern wings belabour and I get
carried away. Plutarch writes of being
overdrawn by the affections. Quiet mind,
in Wyatt's English, is far from slumber
or waking lassitude. It is parsed here
because, since Wyatt wrote, that continent
temper which could play equivocation,
land it and slit it, find there the gold ring
of truth safe in its gut, is history.