GEOFFREY HILL

Trembling from a historical
predicate of forces
Anglo-American
disenfranchised by language
riding out the media
on two bloodshot changed horses
closed in from the Apocalypse
with schizophrenic's voices
heard whispering in the corridors
sleep walking in the university's
lounges of now dissonant
fashionable aunts and uncles
hiding their once Chamberlain
umbrellas in the homecoming 
of fascism for personalism
brushes you by
with the perigean conceit
of a metaphysical arcade
you do not doubt the metaphor
giving you a heart ache
for our time's space of nihilism,
less you embrace the pain
of the tetragrammaton
in the last ninth circle
holding onto the metaphor
but watching your back
like Lot among the chosen.