[for William Butler Yeats, with reverence]
(and for Martin Burke, Irish-Belgian poet and
playwright, in memorium)
all his infinite labouring at bright
coincidence
has long ago spun into the gold
of finer worlds than this one.
do you still read him
as the rose tinged glass,
the harp glossed marvel gone?
I wonder and then wonder endlessly
that poets after him
dared to keep on writing.
who will burn the sun into legend now;
the moon, this starlit haunted maze, into a
jewelry
closer at hand too dear to us
or scan the snows of
ancient mourning
or note-
oh sons and daughters,
the floating counterpoint of the swans
on Ireland's stilled, strange waters.
I have bound these letters with a shaking hand
couching my lament in flowers
from the antique gardens,
the rose ridden hours;
learning in this, my latter age and stirred
beyond praise,
all minstrel lays and sheared minstrelsy
itself-
tremulous, and grave to the very grave
to say to you, only: that poems like his-
we have not earned.
mary angela douglas 14 august 2015
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