My verse under Yeats’ carved door
he merrily chuckled at white
envelope, sketched butterfly
said he preferred to receive
verses this way rather
than reading them across
post-modern websites
a languid phantom
He invited me to an idyllic tea
we savoured small
cheese squares, crumbly
scones watching a squirrel
chomp a cheerful chestnut
LOST AND FOUND
What word can describe
fleeting images, dreams of poets graduated, yet living on ?
V A C A N T
….a vacancy that awaits a letter
wandering ethereal
a word manifesting ____on old desk
a Lover expecting his
Beloved with cherries and hat
a shadow across
poetic spaces
Yeats, gone
ye t, HERE
~~~
I won a poetry prize to go visit the lake isle of Innisfree.
But I didn't wanna go, cuz there's nothing there I particularly wanted to see.
I hear there's just a clay-and-wattles cabin
with a bunch a bees a-blabbin'
and nine rows of beans, and that doesn't really interest me.
When You Are Old Poetry Contest
Sara Kendrick
Yeats' poem describes his courtship that sank
With his misconnection he is bitter
And he takes digs at his beau's true glitter
Alluding that his fire drew her blank
He paints a now-and-then picture of her
Saying he'd be the one holding her hand
Should old age leave her without charm and bland
Yet she wasn't guilt-tripped at his demur
She then cashes in with another man
Which likely prompted this poem's planting
And Yeats' mocking her with his self-ranting
Saying his being was dwarfed by her span
W B Yeats 'SECOND COMING'
1 2
oo.ooam eta
AD0000 TBC
W B Yeats ' WINDING STAIRCASE
_____
ing
wind
ing
wind
wind
ing
wind
ing
wind
ing
wind
ing
wind
ing
wind
ing
wind
ing
______
[ stair ]
~~~~~
W B Yeats ' The Wheel'
__
/ \ / \
| _ © _ |
\ / \ /
---
For Jack B Yeats
sibling fame was his sad fate
An illustrator was his particular art
also a poet for the main part
William Butler Yeats
respected as one of the greats Awarded
Awarded a Nobel prize
being tone deaf is a surprise
For if I had a pence for every pound,
I would ponder first for it to be sound,
For it bears on my soul, I contemplate,
Do they that is endowed suffer this fate,
The teaching I present whose life is poor,
For I fear naught my dream be it grandeur,
Then having the means, beyond all measure,
As dreams are a place that gives me pleasure,
A charming approach opts best for our themes,
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
2020 January 28
Famous poetic lines that inspire Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Silent One
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” By William Butler Yeats
Yeats and I share the same sentiment:
Ageing is absurd.
But Yeats could not cope with it;
He called it a caricature.
But I not only know but also feel—
Old is gold!
I won’t be a Yeats!
Yeats thought of life as a tragedy
And continued to bemoan it.
But I would, after Buddha and Kierkegaard,
Think of life as absurd,
Which I should learn to cope with—by living,
I won’t be a Yeats!
God’s gift to me is this awareness:
I am a participant observer;
And can influence my own life
And change for the better;
And, in the process, may influence others.
And that makes me happy.
I won’t be a Yeats!
***
An 'honorable mention' in the Poetry Contest, "My Secret to Happiness,"
sponsored by Line Gauthier, October 18, 2017.
SON OF SLIGO
To William Butler Yeats - Feb 5 2017
You'll feel the voice of Sligo's heart
in pubs as music plays,
while spirits of the viking's quest
comes on, and here it stays;
their mournful song of blood and death
'tis not what it's about,
but bonding from much harder times
with friends while drinking stout;
their singing raises it to heights
the human spirits need,
and chains that bound their lives before
are loosed, and they are freed;
and here a giant poets words
came to the light of day
to shake the world another time,
but in another way;
this lady's man, always in love,
this Irishman born true,
with little thought, except for all
the things he couldn't do;
so Willie, here's a stout for you,
come sing with us a song,
and be assured, the dreams you had,
didn't turn out wrong.
© ron wilson aka Vee Bdosa the Doylestown Poet
First were the clowns
Shadowy angst of the Deplored,
Lurking at the periphery of our vision;
Then in the darkness, the stars wheel and weep;
As the hard words of hatred fly,
Let the Jews flee to Jerusalem.
Send the seed of Montezuma beyond the walls.
Cries from the shadows,
All hail the Darkness, the darkening plain, the wan moon,
Bind the cohorts of Mohammed,
Shrieks sailed from the shadows,
Hail, Hail, All Hail the Jester
All hail the Darkness, the darkening plain,
Wuotan commands, All hail,
The King of Doubts, of Fools, and Daemons, awakened again,
Wuotan commands, All hail, the King of Clowns,
Of fools, and Daemons, awakened,
The man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition,
He shall change times and law,
He Commands you all,
Götterdämmerun
Downfall is upon us.
Now, all that was good is lost.
Götterdämmerun
Hope. A memory.
And that rough beast of Bethlehem,
In its moment of glory,
Jests and embraces the Ancient Enemy.
After Yeats and Heaney,
you wonder when the new one
will come galloping
out of Dublin or perhaps
from yet another farm
but you won’t know
until you read the lines
and hear the music by someone
you have never heard of.
If no one else is around
you’ll shout to the sleeping cat,
here’s the new one!
and then sit back and listen
to the words roll out, knowing
a new world has been found.
Donal Mahoney
Oceans wend and eyes lift to the faded summer moon,
like a dried water spot on the morning sky
Here now on the edge of a princely river
Cast a cold Eye
Over hills that shadow Drumcliff and the run of the wild boar
Stone walls smuggle narrow lanes and wandering breath
Devenir un sujet de discorde
On Life, on Death
In the absence of women and men and conventional phrase
Below hazel crosses and where fickle winds cry
We gather unknowing of those before
Horseman pass by
Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman pass by
William Butler Yeats, as inscribed on his grave site.
Know the Beauty of tomorrow began in the past--
And it must last through today,
Suffering the indignities at hand.
And then you can see out of Spiritus Mundi
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
looking out with gaze blank and pitiless--
The Nightmare that slouches towards Bethlehem to be born...
And Terra says he is coming
A Sign of the Second Coming-- Yeats
6/9/'14
Yeats's poem the "Second Coming" was about WWI and how it was the war to end all wars, only now we know better. Really WWI signaled an end of fighting of one era to the beginning of another, and this horrified Yeats as the latter was so very bloody. Frightened him in a way that he wondered if man had not lost sense of himself, and I try to extend Yeat's vision of a spiritual nightmare into an environmental expression-- especially in the last line.
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