Triumph of Love

The Triumph of Love by Geoffrey Hill, 82 pages

     what is to become of memory?  Yes - I know -

     I've asked that before.

In 150 interwoven pieces The Triumph of Love surveys the state of the world in these exhausted days before the Judgement, an end which seems not to have drawn any closer since the apocalypse of the Second World War.

     too much is owed, impossible to repay 

A major theme is poetry and its continual stream of laus et vituperatio - praise and blame, though undoubtedly more of the latter these days.

     As for the rest of us, must we describe

     Finnegan's Wake as a dead end?

Hill self-consciously toys with editorial inserts and second thoughts.

     Take out supposition.  Insert suppository. 

Yet it is with a sly sincerity he celebrates that which

     commits and commends us to loving

     desperately, yet not with despair

And thus he looks backwards to the world's rebirth.

     Paul's reinscription of the Kenotic Hymn -

     God... made himself of no reputation... took

     the shape of a servant - is our manumission,

     Zion new-centered at the circumference

     of the world's concentration.