Hindsight by Bill Coyle - The New Criterion

Poems

April 2008

Hindsight

A poem by Bill Coyle.

Burke

was right!

But is it really necessary I
renounce all of his works? Couldn’t I just
renounce the vast majority of them?
We were out walking, you were explaining why
you couldn’t quite convert. I was nonplussed.
Theologically, I could condemn
what seemed to me a clear misunderstanding
of the relationship of good and evil,
but in aesthetic terms I understood:
Given that you imagined God commanding
all that was light and airy and the devil
all that was dark and dangerous, pure good
had to be lethal, both in life and art.
I think I still believe that, in my heart.

Bill Coyle's first book of poems, The God of This World to His Prophet, won the New Criterion Poetry Prize.

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