The Sacred by Stephen Dunn (and request)

[pyreneeees]

I have a request and a poem. The request: my friend remembers a poem about spring where there's a line like, "I think I will not kill (or hang) myself this year." Does anyone know what it is? We're dying to find out.

The Sacred
by Stephen Dunn
After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank
in their chairs, the

Comments

[fullofsparks]

You might be thinking of G. K. Chesterton's A Ballade of Suicide:

The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours on the wall
Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"
The strangest whim has seized me. . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay
My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall
I see a little cloud all pink and grey
Perhaps the rector's mother will NOT call
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way
I never read the works of Juvenal
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

The world will have another washing-day;
The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;
Rationalists are growing rational
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray,
So secret that the very sky seems small
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

ENVOI

Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
Even to-day your royal head may fall
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

[pyreneeees]

We thought of that, but we actually think it might be more contemporary. Hmmm.

[bleodswean]

omfg. That poem!!!