Category: Poetry

Oh, I despise to talk politics, but I’m afraid I must throw in a comment since reading some more of Yeats. In 6 years, I’ve gone from supporting President Bush to not. Why? No elaboration, just this: Iraq was a bad idea (and still is), and the federal government continues to bloat. I was hoping it would shrink. As for striving to change the minds of politicians? I’m not up for it and I don’t envy their position either. I think this sums it up best:

On Being Asked for a War Poem
by William Butler Yeats

I think it better that in times like these
A poet’s mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

I recently bought a book of poetry by William Butler Yeats. So far, this is one of the best ones I’ve come across. I love how it deals with the frustration of producing art, that those who are not artists do not understand how hard of work it is. Pretty much anything we accomplish we do so by the sweat of our brow. Then he turns his own complaint on its head and reveals the labor of the woman is even more misunderstood.

Adam’s Curse

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, “A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.”
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, “To be born woman is to know —
Although they do not talk of it at school —
That we must labour to be beautiful.”
I said, “It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.”

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

This was originally posted by Tall Skinny Kiwi, but it is very much worth reprinting!

Beannacht (“Blessing”) by John O’Donohue,
from his book of Christian and Celtic wisdom titled Anam Cara.

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

The language is beautiful. Our usual blessing to each other is “Have a nice day”, or “Get well soon”. That’s nice but this is poetic and well thought out. In my childhood, I think something like this would have been looked at as purely sentimental and flowery – a waste time. But can words like this actually have power? No, I’m not talking about a Wiccan-esqe magic spell kind of power. Or a “good vibes” karma spreading kind of power. But something maybe CLOSER to that than having no significance beyond the words on the page.

At the most basic level it can communicate that the one giving the blessing actually put some time and effort into it. That can communicate love. Like going out of the way to buy your wife the exact kind of special orchid she likes instead of just getting her any old bouquet of flowers at the grocery store. So that’s real power, but it doesn’t leave the confines of our own heads.

Some would say that God is very INTERACTIVE with mankind in real time. He works with our prayers (or blessings in this case) and that what we think and do actually has an effect on God and how he then chooses to act and relate to us. Others think the very notion of that is silly and even dangerous. So what kind of power does a blessing like this have?

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with merry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quit in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Loves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Grying spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.

Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.

-William Butler Yeats, 1892

I became fascinated with this poem after hearing the Loreena McKennitt song adaptation of it.
I can just imagine a Christian looking right past the beauty of it and dismissing it as a shallow stack of look-inside-yourself-whitney-houston-hero-feel-good-humanism. Bah! Poetry that is just a little bit vague is always the best. It allows you to give it a very personal meaning. The original intention of the author is not important. I love the imagery of the tree of holiness planted inside us. Laughing and full of life. I relate well to the cynical lens of the despair demons (real or imagined?) hold. One makes my eyes bright and radiating kindness to my wife, kids, friends, and strangers. The other makes them downcast and hard.

“Made when God slept in times of old”. I imagine the giant father time, who sleeps under the earth in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. He is sleeping in the Silver Chair when they pass by his enormous body in the deep. In The Last Battle, his silhouette is seen from hundreds of miles away as he awakes and winds his horn at the passing of the world.

There is more that I can say, but I’ll leave it at that.