Poems

wow, great poems, I loved!

 

First thing I've written in a long-ass time. No title as of yet, and it's likely still a work in progress.

I dreamed that I wrote you a poem,
asked you to teach me
about scar tissue, the healing process
of unfeeling
once I have felt more than I can bear
before learning to feel again

The mechanics of it—
skin shivering into itself under
your fingers, your lips,
a strand of your hair grazing my cheek
from above—
go beyond the languages I have mastered

Inhaling oxygen to generate
energy, needed
with increasing demand,
to envelop you
exhaling my name, feverish,
limbs blending one against another—
a covalent tension,
a molecular fusion in languages
I don't understand, only I know—

I love you
with hunger
and need.

 

THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

 

He kicked ass that's for sure.
If only he'd been as aggressive about his support for the Irish Rebellion,

 

This is a poem I can recite from memory (perhaps a slightly different version, as noted in bold type above).

I remember once, in some online discussion, someone asked why GWB was so appealing to people.

I responded with a line from the above:

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.

 

I love Yeats. Beautiful poems, just lovely use of language. His poems based in Irish myth are superb, I think-- "The Hosting of the Sidhe," the two Cuchulainn poems, "Under Ben Bulben," "The Two Kings," and all the others. And I adore his love poems and his pastorals and such. Two of my WBY favorites:

Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland

The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand,
Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand;
Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies,
But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes
Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.
The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea,
And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say.
Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat;
But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet
Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.
The yellow pool has overflowed high up on Clooth-na-Bare,
For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;
Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood;
But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood
Is Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

Who Goes With Fergus?

Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.

 

This was the one my grandfather liked to quote, usually after a number of Guinness.
An Irish Airman Forsees His Death

I KNOW that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My county is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
William Butler Yeats

 

This poem, by Michigan poet Will Carleton, first published in 1872, helped inspire the "Townsend Plan" for old-age relief, and therefore helped bring about Social Security.

Carleton's poem is based on real people he met at the poor farm in Hillsdale County, Michigan.

Later, he wrote a sequel to this, in which she is rescued from the poor house by the supposed black sheep of the family. Note that she has "half a dozen" children, but only mentions five by name.