A Poem for Our Times--by William Butler Yeats ("The Second Coming")

Check out the first stanza, especially the final line.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

       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?

A Couple Love Poems for Valentine's Day

When You Are Old

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.#

If It Were Not for You

BY HAYDEN CARRUTH

Liebe, meine liebe, I had not hoped   

to be so poor

                   The night winds reach   

like the blind breath of the world

in a rhythm without mind, gusting and beating   

as if to destroy us, battering our poverty   

and all the land’s flat and cold and dark

under iron snow

                        the dog leaps in the wind   

barking, maddened with winter, and his voice   

claps again and again down the valley   

like tatters of revolutionary pennants

                                                         birches

cry and hemlocks by the brook

stand hunched and downcast with their hands   

in their pockets

Liebe, the world is wild   

and without intention

                               how far

this might be from the night of Christmas   

if it were not for you.

Down the reaching wind

shrieks of starlight bear broken messages

among mountains where shadows plunge

                                                      yet our brightness   

is unwavering

                   Kennst du das land   

wo die zitronen blühn, im dunkeln laub

die goldorangen ... liebe

art thou singing

It is a question partly

of the tree with our stars and partly

of your radiance brought from the land   

where legends flower to this land   

but more than these our bright poverty   

is a house in the wind and a light   

on the mountain

Liebe, our light rekindled

in this remoteness from the other land,

in this dark of the blue mountain where only   

the winds gather

      is what we are for the time that we are   

      what we know for the time that we know

How gravely and sweetly the poor touch in the dark.#

Still Life, With Grand Babies

                                                --for Linda

You on the blue recliner,

Twelve-week old Robby over your right shoulder,

Three-year-old Colin snuggling you on the left,

Close to your heart

            Close to your heart!

                                                            Bob / March 28, 2014

Love Poems for Valentine's Day

Probably we should ban the word love for the next little while and proceed like the biblical Jews, who would not write or utter the sacred name of the Lord. Love is too mysterious, too profaned, too important almost for speech. But then what else do we human beings have? So in our imperfect way, we talk about God and we talk about love.

Here is one of the greatest love poems, written by the Irish poet and patriot, William Butler Yeats:

WHEN YOU ARE OLD


WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

["When You Are Old" is reprinted from The Rose. W.B. Yeats. 1893.]


Here is a poem I wrote some years back about family love and family happiness:

Lucky Seven (Lucky Five)
(Euclid and Wickliffe, Ohio, circa 1992)

When the snow finally melted
We pulled the four old bikes
Out of our Beech Drive garage
To head out for our adventure.

Emily was strapped in the baby seat,
Carolan wobbled a bit on her two-wheeler,
Now without training wheels,
While Julia was already a master of hers.

I would lead the way, followed by the girls,
And Linda would guard the back,
Watching over all, urging me to slow down,
Walk the bikes across Lloyd,
Watch the uneven sidewalk,
Shouldn’t the girls be wearing helmets?
Forever the mother.

Across Lloyd Road we entered exotic Wickliffe!
Down the street named “Grand Boulevard,”
A nice street indeed, but not the Champs Elysees!

The first stop was Wickliffe’s Intihar Park,
The swings, the monkey bars, the slide,
Then back on the bikes, through the park to Worden Road.

A couple blocks down Worden, et voila!
The Promised Land—or at least the promised store, “Lucky Seven”!

Lucky Seven was lucky mostly in my children’s minds.
This old relic of the 1930’s was a mecca for those needing pop,
Beer, cigarettes, and lottery tickets.

My girls—they wanted Popsicles or Eskimo Pies.
And Linda and I needed a coke.

We’d lean against our bikes outside the store,
Or at times sit at the picnic table behind that ramshackle place,
And in the early spring chill, enjoy our little treats
And catch our breath from the long bike hike.

The ride home was more direct, straight down Grand,
Then left onto Walnut to Beech.

* * *

In memory, this is the happiest time—
We are the “Lucky Five”—
Linda, me, and the kids, Julia, Carolan, and Emily.

There are no photos, no movies of this,
The most precious moments are unrecorded,
Only indelible memory and deepest gratitude

For this gift of family life.

April 9, 2005