Excerpt
From A Wild Peculiar Joy
A Wild Peculiar Joy by Irving Layton
Paperback
THERE WERE NO SIGNS
By walking I found out
Where I was going.
By intensely hating, how to love.
By loving, whom and what to love.
By grieving, how to laugh from the belly.
Out of infirmity, I have built strength.
Out of untruth, truth.
From hypocrisy, I wove directness.
Almost now I know who I am.
Almost I have the boldness to be that man.
Another step
And I shall be where I started from.
Copyright © 2004 by Irving Layton
Irving Layton was one of Canada’s most powerful, groundbreaking voices, and an important and influential writer whose distinguished career spanned almost forty-five years. He was the recipient of numerous awards for his poetry and for his contribution to Canadian Literature, and he was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Irving Layton died in Montreal in January 2006.
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