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57346: Significance

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posted on 2024-05-02, 18:52 authored by First World War Poetry Digital Archive Project Team

The cunning moment curves its claws
Round the body of our curious wish,
But push a shoulder through its straitened
laws---
Then are you hooked to wriggle like a fish.
Lean in high middle 'twixt two tapering points,
Yet rocks and undulations control
The agile brain, the limber joints
The sinews of the soul.
Chaos that coincides, form that refutes all
sway,
Shapes to the eye quite other to the touch,
All twisted things continue to our clay
Like added limbs and hair dispreaded over-
much.
And after it draws in its claws
The rocks and unquiet sink to a flat ground.
Then follow desert hours, the vacuous pause
Till some mad indignation unleashes the hound.
And those flat hours and dead unseeing things
Cower and crowd and burrow for us to use,
Where sundry gapings spurn and preparing
wings---
And O! our hands would use all ere we lose.

History

Identifier

3288.txt

Creator

Rosenberg, Isaac (1890-1918)

Date

1977

Date Created

01/01/1977

Temporal Date

31/12/1977

Type

Poem

Rights

The Isaac Rosenberg Literary Estate. As published in Rosenberg, Isaac; Bottomley, Gordon [ed.]; Harding, Denys [ed.], The Collected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg. London: Chatto and Windus, 1977. Preliminaries and editorial matter omitted.

Repository Name

ProQuest

Publisher

The First World War Poetry Digital Archive

Usage metrics

    The Isaac Rosenberg Collection

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