A sad and angry consolation

[...] I ask you:
what are poems for? They are to console us
with their own gift, which is like perfect pitch.
Let us commit that to our dust. What
ought a poem to be? Answer, a sad
and angry consolation. What is
the poem? What figures? Say,
a sad and angry consolation. That's
beautiful. Once more? A sad and angry
consolation.

De "The Triumph of Love CXLVIII"

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006