Geoffrey Hill (b. 18 June 1932) died last Thursday, 30 June 2016. His widow Alice Goodman asked, ‘Please pray for the repose of the soul of my husband, Geoffrey Hill, who died yesterday evening, suddenly, and without pain or dread.’
One of the greatest English poets of the 20th century, his warning from The Triumph of Love (1998) still sounds clear:
Ingratitude
still gets to me, the unfairness
and waste of survival: a nation
with so many memorials but no memory.
Perhaps we have redeemed a moment.
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