The Dialectic at Howth
He liked to play games with his children . . . (Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station, 11, 12).
(For Christine) The bucking children on the sitting-room floor, The scattered toys, the dog-eared children's books, The furniture shoved in any convenient nook, The table on its end against the door Draped in a gray camping-blanket as a kind Of hide-out, staff-headquarters or simple eating joint (The purpose varying with demands of action, the points For decision or the solid needs of time) —This Marx-like setting shows us a roughly honest world Where shades of meaning, subtle and clever phrasing
Such as concern the scholar who owns the table Are uncalled for. The logical accurate words That spang around the room convey, the exact
sense
That they are meant to, in a strictly present tense.
VALENTIN IREMONGER
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