Sailing With Yeats

When you are old and gray, sounding out Yeats --

if life’s last late adventure, Byzantium

still awaits or … the light through autumn’s atrium

might be his cold-hearted censure ‘too late, too late …’

 

should you slip peacefully into the night

like so many other extinguishing lanterns …

or go kicking and howling at the planters,

at the raw deal of the dying light?

 

I’ve lived and loved enough, wept over brides

too numerous to remember … the ways

I promised to ride out the troubling waves,

to waste what little time remains mourning tides. 

 

If once this sure-footed youth, blithe to days --

how the tithe of a sun gathering up minutes,

closing out accounts, laps about the limits --

at least I’ve learned the conceit of thinking otherwise.

Ken e Bujold

Reviews

[Kelly Scheppers]

What an opening line! How inviting the fire and reminiscing over Yeats. I found myself absorbed by lines, like "twilight's atrium", and the "encroaching gloam". How exquisitely this is written, the countless rhymes long forgotten, the harsh winter's frost. Such an engaging read, Ken. And a pleasure, always.

[Ken e Bujold]

Thanks Kelly. Hope I've managed to keep some of what you enjoyed from the original. Currently working on short forms, so the original needed a bit of hair cut to highlight the theme of what I am after here.

Thanks for the kind review