NO ONE SHALL CALL BY NAME THE INNUMERABLE SWANS

 

NO ONE SHALL CALL BY NAME THE INNUMERABLE SWANS

for William Butler Yeats, unsurpassed

and for the late Irish Belgian poet, Martin Burke, my friend.

 

no one shall dare to sing again about the milky stars

to measure time and history by the gravitas of the Rose

to find the still music in the overshadowing woods

by heart, composed.

or beauty keening desolate in the margin of dream,

along the white roads.

requiescat, then. 

no one shall call them by name, the innumerable swans

or command the peacock tinted skies

to whorl, to whirl through poetry devised

for all that dies and cannot find its way

changeling, through the anguish of the living day

when what is noble dims to merely enterprise.

strike the harp they will not dare again

to call back those doom fretted men

of the Easter Rising

tuned to the fatal hour and impervious-

babble of power as they will.

nor shall they compel the winds to rise

from Thoor Ballylee

the  mythic sails to fill

no celtic twilight, seconding the first

to bud forth into reechoing infinity;

because the first remains.

nor through driving rains

summers in Byzantium

to shine again

confounding music in the end

nor words to strive

against the churlish, the cherishless tides.

mary angela douglas August 1-3. 2023