"The heart's tough shell is still to crack / When, spent of all its wine and bread, / Unwinkingly the altar lies / Wreathed in its sour breath, cold and dead, / A server has put out its eyes."
— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)
Author
Work Title
Date
1959
Metaphor
"The heart's tough shell is still to crack / When, spent of all its wine and bread, / Unwinkingly the altar lies / Wreathed in its sour breath, cold and dead, / A server has put out its eyes."
Metaphor in Context
So I heard once. But now I hear,
Like shifted blows at my numb back,
A grinding heel; a scraped chair.
The heart's tough shell is still to crack
When, spent of all its wine and bread,
Unwinkingly the altar lies
Wreathed in its sour breath, cold and dead,
A server has put out its eyes.
(p. 10, ll. 31-8)
Like shifted blows at my numb back,
A grinding heel; a scraped chair.
The heart's tough shell is still to crack
When, spent of all its wine and bread,
Unwinkingly the altar lies
Wreathed in its sour breath, cold and dead,
A server has put out its eyes.
(p. 10, ll. 31-8)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Hill, Geoffrey. Somewhere is Such a Kingdom: Poems, 1952-1971 Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975.
Date of Entry
11/24/2010
