The Devil by Patrick Kavanagh – from A View of God and the Devil

I met the devil too,

And the adjectives by which I would describe him are these:

Solemn,

Boring,

Conservative.

He was a man the world would appoint to a Board,

He would be on the list of invitees for a bishop’s garden party,

He would look like an artist.

He was the fellow who wrote in newspapers about music,

Got into a rage when someone laughed;

He was serious about unserious things;

You had to be careful about his inferiority complex

For he was conscious of being uncreative.

These two poems together always make me laugh. Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967), the Monaghan poet who settled in Dublin and wrote so many beautiful and wonderful poems.

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