{"id":99971,"date":"2016-07-01T11:24:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-01T15:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=99971"},"modified":"2016-07-01T11:58:40","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T15:58:40","slug":"genesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/01\/genesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Genesis"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo: Clara Molden.<\/p><\/div>\n

The English poet Geoffrey Hill\u2014a lifelong contributor to <\/em>The Paris\u00a0Review\u2014has died at eighty-four<\/a>. His first poem for the magazine, the aptly named \u201cGenesis,\u201d appeared in our second issue (Summer 1953<\/a>). In his memory, we\u2019re republishing it today.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I<\/p>\n

Against the burly air I strode,
Where the tight ocean heaves its load,
Crying the miracles of God.<\/p>\n

And first I brought the sea to bear
Upon the dead weight of the land;
And the waves flourished at my prayer,
The rivers spawned their sand.<\/p>\n

And where the streams were salt and full,
The tough pig-headed salmon strove,
Curbing the ebb and the tide\u2019s pull
To reach the steady hills above.<\/p>\n

II<\/p>\n

The second day I stood and saw
The osprey plunge with triggered claw,
Feathering blood along the shore,
To lay the living sinew bare.<\/p>\n

III<\/p>\n

And I renounced, on the fourth day,
This fierce and unregenerate clay,<\/p>\n

Building as a huge myth for man
The watery Leviathan,<\/p>\n

And made the glove-winged albatross
Scour the ashes of the sea
Where Capricorn and Zero cross,
A brooding immortality\u2014
Such as the charm\u00e9d phoenix has
In the unwithering tree.<\/p>\n

IV<\/p>\n

The phoenix burns as cold as frost;
And, like a legendary ghost
The phantom-bird goes wild and lost,
Upon pointless ocean tossed.<\/p>\n

So, the fifth day, I turned again
To flesh and blood and the blood\u2019s pain.<\/p>\n

V<\/p>\n

On the sixth day, as I rode
In haste about the works of God,
With spurs I plucked the horse\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n

By blood we live, the hot, the cold
To ravage and redeem the world:
There is no bloodless myth will hold.<\/p>\n

And by Christ\u2019s blood are men made free
Though in close shrouds their bodies lie
Under the rough pelt of the sea;<\/p>\n

Though Earth has rolled beneath her weight
The bones that cannot bear the light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The English poet Geoffrey Hill\u2014a lifelong contributor to The Paris\u00a0Review\u2014has died at eighty-four. His first poem for the magazine, the aptly named \u201cGenesis,\u201d appeared in our second issue (Summer 1953). In his memory, we\u2019re republishing it today.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1012,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[23071,16099,13646,23066,2861,20537,23070,165,2047,21698,1772],"class_list":["post-99971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-english-poetry","tag-english-poets","tag-genesis","tag-geoffrey-hill","tag-history","tag-in-memoriam","tag-paris-review-history","tag-poetry","tag-poets","tag-remembrance","tag-t-s-eliot"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cGenesis,\u201d a Poem by the Late Geoffrey Hill<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The poet Geoffrey Hill\u2014a lifelong contributor to the Review\u2014has died at eighty-four.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/01\/genesis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Genesis by Geoffrey Hill\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 1, 2016 \u2013 The English poet Geoffrey Hill\u2014a lifelong contributor to The Paris\u00a0Review\u2014has died at eighty-four. 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