Patrick Kavanagh

The Hour

Now is the clock hour
The triumphant stroke
Struck. This is the inexorable.
This rubber-band life
Is stretched to violin sweetness.

Beware! If the gong clangs
On your passivity
Narrow despair is a grinning
Mandarin.

Now is desirable
Achieving ready sensuous to embrace,
The hills marshal furrows
Soldierly. A marching tune is played.

O children!
Now have we borne the exultant
Hood on our shoulders.
Who will be the defeated after?

Dublin Magazine
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