It Is Difficult At Times To Repress

Anything Can Happen Is Also, Incidentally, A Poem That Arose From Teaching. I'd Talked About The Horace Ode (i, 34) [on Which The Poem Is Based] In A Lecture I Gave At Harvard In The Fall Of 2000 Entitled Bright Boltsand Remembered It After The Twin Towers Attack.

The External Reality And Inner Dynamic Of Happenings In Northern Ireland Between 1968 And 1974 Were Symptomatic Of Change, Violent Change Admittedly, But Change Nevertheless, And For The Minority Living There, Change Had Been Long Overdue.

Suspect Too Much Sweet Talk But Never Close Your Mind.

One Of The Very First Poems I Wrote Was Docker That Fist Would Drop A Hammer On A Catholic And One Of The Sturdiest Was Requiem For The Croppies, Written 50 Years After 1916 [the Year Of The Easter Rising]. Being Responsible And What It Means, What It Demands, Have Indeed Preoccupied Me Maybe Too Much. But This Is It, This Is The Thing, This Is What You're Up Against.

As Writers And Readers, As Sinners And Citizens, Our Realism And Our Aesthetic Sense Make Us Wary Of Crediting The Positive Note.