EXPERIENCE "I want to fight you," he said in a Belfast accent. Amazed and scared, with hurried words I resisted. "Fighting solves nothing. Tell me how I've annoyed you," I said. But more insulted the man persisted. In the lavatory he squared his fists and approached me: "Now you can talk," I backed over cold stone in A room that contained us and joined us. "It's all so silly," I pleaded, searching for spaces to be alone in. I shrank from his strangeness, not only afraid. But at last of course I suffered what could not be delayed, The innocuous struggle, the fighting words, "bastard," and "f...," A torn shirt and my lip numb and bloody, My anger and -- strange-- the feel of my own body New to me, as I struck, as he struck. -- James Simmons (born 1933)