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D. H. Lawrence
Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible
whips,
And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree
Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship's
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.
Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender
lash
Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound
Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it
drowned
The other voice in a silence of blood, 'neath the noise
of the ash.
the first word was oh
then presently you
is now any better
with my mind full
and vexed
angry words go out
in a dead mouth
a little winter and summer rise within
and me in the business of anger
I might say anything severe
like a simple rogue
like a troubled king
I sing of the plots against peace
Lord Sand left the sea
for the fields
I fear he is not well
that it was done for a joke
the weather is now very warm
an axe white with light
but Lord Sand they say
will lead in the darkest manner
mouth in mourning like a prince
believed to lay up hidden money
lord of anger
without any consciousness of his faults
he has no face but a grave
which I will not call my brother
I resolve to stand on my own legs
or fall
angry at being here
like a child of war
after my floor fell on me
after a quiet doubt will not do
my new-strung self
angry at this one good wing
Alone with
my comfort,
a pungent necessity:
to look askew,
to call up an anger spirit,
to yield to the mother
of all trouble.
My fat hat is an angry hat,
a troublesome hat, a weary hat,
a staid hat, a yesterday hat,
a war hat, a Big Brother hat.
In the morning to see a general
hanged, drawn and quartered,
his head and heart shown to the people,
great shouts of joy sure
to come shortly to the Lord.
Home, where I was angry with my wife
and kicked the basket I bought her
in Holland and broke it.
All afternoon setting up shelves.
Home, where I
brought home with me
all the house—
a sad geography, thinking
to have found a home
but not being home—
gone somewhere else
as angry.
anger is building an office in my chest
out of lies and quandary
whether to burn
or to sleep with a troubled word
Anger made
a good home:
come to dinner vexed
and walk on lead.
I dine on gall
to see in what war
they are, and fat
am I now in my fear.
Anger is life.