Suspend Your Disbelief

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Louis MacNeice, "Snow"


A number of poets have promised to send us recommendations very soon; in the meantime, I’ll share one of my own favorite poems:

Snow
[by Louis MacNeice]

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes –
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s
hands –
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.


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