Sailing To Byzantium
(W. B. Yeats – 1865-1939)
That is no country for old men.
The young
In one another's arms, birds in
the trees
- Those dying generations – at
their song,
The salmon-falls, the
mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, fowl, commend all
summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and
dies.
Caught in that sensual music all
neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry
thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick,
unless
Soul clap its hands and sing,
and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal
dress,
Nor is there singing school but
studying
Monuments of its own
magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the
seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium .
O sages standing in God's holy
fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne
in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my
soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with
desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and
gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never
take
My bodily form from any natural
thing,
But such a form as Grecian
goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold
enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to
sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or
to come.
I post my poem, Must Be at My Best, as a link, and I know it ain’t even half-the-way there! Except the common thread is, like Yeats, I’m arrived at a point where I ponder on growing old. Bouts of illness warn me that fading vitality, stamina and strength will soon declare the venues and arenas where I once brashly and boldly walked in, now, ‘no country for old men’.
2011. This was another year sucked quietly from the blood (Kenneth Slessor). We went to
Must Be at My Best.
In the
Priceline chemist
the old
bird behind the cash counter
has her
eyes follow me in,
she
stays with me a tad too long,
either
suspicious, or
she
fancies me,
I’m
fighting off the fever chills,
dressed
in my old black corduroys,
a black
T-shirt beneath the V
of a
black sweat top
that I
slept in recently.
I think
maybe she’s watching me,
but
then I’m sitting in a chair
at the
prescription counter, and
she
comes out from behind the cash counter
through
a swinging door, and
talks
to the prescription guys
about
going to lunch
and
could they man the counter
and all
the time, I’m sure
she’s
taking peek glances at me
I’m
slouched back as much as I can
in the
plastic chair
with my
corduroy legs stuck straight out
above
my brown suede slip-ons.
She
disappears out the back to lunch.
The
prescription guy takes my money
at the
cash counter,
and as
I go through the automatic sliding doors
I’m
thinking about other missed opportunities.
No comments:
Post a Comment