“One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most ‘intellectual’ piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are?”

I swipe myself again in my rawest spot, my logical dyslexia. I cannot shape up 
            to formal reasoning any more than I can cope with the tax year.

As, many times, motive is inaccessible, must we get used to the art of the 
          plausible, and let live? And thrive as prats do on chat shows, toasting 
          each other in bat juice, and coasting?

Why such irony in re the mystical context when a graph of even the most commonplace exchange would appear perplexed; when we drop out from the plainest statement in the posture of a bat?

Fantastic to be Lowry by proxy,
Confabulating him; to stand tongue-tied
In awe of yourself; to hold epoxy-

Crack of a starting-pistol. Jean Jaurès
dies in a wine-puddle. Who or what stares
through the café-window créped in powder-smoke?

Evasive souls, of whom the wise lose track,
Die in each night, who, with their day-tongues, sift
The waking-taste of manna or of blood:

Poetry as salutation; taste
Of Pentecost’s ashen feast. Blue wounds.
The tongue’s atrocities. Poetry

Evasive souls, of whom the wise lose track,
Die in each night, who, with their day-tongues, sift
The waking-taste of manna or of blood:

Knowing the dead, and how some are disposed, 
Subdued under rubble, water, sand-graves, 
In clenched cinders, not yielding their abused 

The young, having risen early, had gone, 
Some, with excursions, beyond the bay-mouth, 
Some toward lakes, a fragile reflected sun. 

For whom the possessed sea littered on both shores  
Ruinous arms; being fired, and for good,
To sound the constitution of just wars 

The cross staggered him. At the cliff-top  
Thomas, beneath its burden, stood 
While the dulled wood 

I looked for rest, though without love.
Since I had found a course to run
Deep as a river in its groove

Chased down, and baited for the kill,
  And naked to men’s eyes,
I struggled blindly a great while

When snow like sheep lay in the fold
And winds went begging at each door‚
And the far hills were blue with cold,

When snow like sheep lay in the fold
And winds went begging at each door‚
And the far hills were blue with cold,

Against the burly air I strode,
Where the tight ocean heaves its load,
Crying the miracles of God.

The English poet Geoffrey Hill—a lifelong contributor to The Paris Review—has died at eighty-four. His first poem for the magazine, the aptly named “Genesis,” appeared in our second issue (Summer 1953). In his memory, we’re republishing it today.  I…