DENIS DONOGHUE'S WORLD
born in 1928

Writing from
a Jamesian heart
in a world that stains
more than a church window
in the rain,
understanding what you
taught to us young poets
about Poe,Eliot and Crane
as a critic with a belief
with great class judgment
that our education in English
was not in vain
who learnt with discernment
as a resident in the Dublin library
teaching on the handwritten nature
of Heine, Burns and Shelley
who taught us about the Romans
Ovid, Dante and Cavalcanti
hidden on the home book shelf
among the Italians and Latins
all about the Ghibillines and Guelfs
and the metaphysicals like Donne
the moderns from Joyce, Hopkins
Keats, Yeats and sonnets of Dickinson
capturing the wishful  modified part
of a transmogrified Western culture
with great poetic wealth
from an Irish critic and talker
who defied the stealthy attention
of any vain literary mocker
with your sunny adventures
of intellectual consideration
and polite conversation
who cannot conceive
of a nature to believe you
as an intellectual mentor
in a civilization that cried out
from Vietnam's stealth vulture war
on all of us
you are still popular
as Dr. emeritus on the campus
far from our home
in Paris and Rome
like Jacques and Raissa Maritain
we will still read you, Dubliner
Dennis Donoghue
in a certain wonder
by night light underground
in our shade and shadow
under lace curtains
from folded sheets in dormitories
or in Kentucky monasteries
enfolded in a cold abbey
of Father Tom Merton
your world in the word
that will remain.