Uploaded October 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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1961. Louis MacNeice.

His father gave him a box of truisms
Shaped like a coffin, then his father died;
The truisms remained on the mantelpiece
As wooden as the playbox they had been packed in
Or that his father skulked inside.

Then he left home, left the truisms behind him
Still on the mantlepiece, met love, met war,
Sordor, disappointment, defeat, betrayal,
Till through disbeliefs he arrived at a house
He could not remember seeing before.

And he walked straight in; it was where he had come from
And something told him the way to behave.
He raised his hand and blessed his home;
And a tall tree sprouted from his father's grave.