Sapphics Against Anger

By Timothy Steele b. 1948 Timothy Steele

Angered, may I be near a glass of water;

May my first impulse be to think of Silence,

Its deities (who are they? do, in fact, they

Exist? etc.).

May I recall what Aristotle says of

The subject: to give vent to rage is not to

Release it but to be increasingly prone

To its incursions.

May I imagine being in the Inferno,

Hearing it asked: “Virgilio mio, who’s

That sulking with Achilles there?” and hearing

Virgil say: “Dante,

That fellow, at the slightest provocation,

Slammed phone receivers down, and waved his arms like

A madman. What Attila did to Europe,

What Genghis Khan did

To Asia, that poor dope did to his marriage.”

May I, that is, put learning to good purpose,

Mindful that melancholy is a sin, though

Stylish at present.

Better than rage is the post-dinner quiet,

The sink’s warm turbulence, the streaming platters,

The suds rehearsing down the drain in spirals

In the last rinsing.

For what is, after all, the good life save that

Conducted thoughtfully, and what is passion

If not the holiest of powers, sustaining

Only if mastered.

Timothy Steele, “Sapphics Against Anger” from Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970-1986. Copyright � 1986, 1995 by Timothy Steele. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press, www.uapress.com.

Source: Sapphics Against Anger and Other Poems (1986)

Biography

Timothy Steele was born in 1948 in Burlington, Vermont, and holds degrees from Stanford University and Brandeis University, where he studied with the poet J.V. Cunningham. The influence of formal masters like Cunningham and Yvor Winters, a force at Stanford for much of the early 20th century, is apparent in Steele’s poetry, which is notable for its allegiance to traditional forms, meters, and rhyme schemes. Though Steele has . . .

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