I Credit Poetry For Making

Don't Be Surprised If I Demur, For, Be Advised My Passport's Green.

History Says, Don’t Hope On This Side Of The Grave, But Then, Once In A Lifetime The Longed-for Tidal Wave Of Justice Can Rise Up, And Hope And History Rhyme

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.

A Writer Is Not Different From A Reader, In That The Common Ragbag Of Orthodoxies And Assumptions Is What A Poet Has To Work With As Well.

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.