Page 43

A compact political-literary lament linking England, Ireland, Eliot, and Donne in a drowning vision of mutual ruin.

Because the page is so compressed, the allusions do the heavy lifting. The result feels like a clipped historical curse: nations, writers, and the sea all collapse into one shared image of drowning and reciprocal violence.

Second placement of 'England Dying' (cf. page 33): Eliot, the Irish killing you too, each drowned 'on the Donne island of our own'.

The reprise confirms the pun is the poem — if the book only printed it once you might take it as a wisecrack; twice, it becomes a motif. The minor difference ('Irish even' rather than 'Irish ever') changes the tense of the accusation, softly. The second appearance teaches the reader to hear the first as an index entry.