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Monday, September 11, 2006

The foul rag and bone shop of the heart

I've only recently been interested in poetry ... I used to hate that it gave info in a roundabout manner. The good news in this is that all the poems and poets are new to me, even those most read by others. An example - it took an oblique reference to the words in this post's title (from some mvie on tv) to set me searching for the poem below ...

The Circus Animals' Desertion
- William Butler Yeats

I

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

II

What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride.

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

III

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

***

As I read about Yeats in Wikipedia (one of the things I found most interesting was his membership in the Golden Dawn.), I was amazed that I managed to go therough life without really learning about him, if only by osmosis ... he's referenced in things both scholarly and popular-culture (from songs by groups like the Cranberries, to movies like Equilirium and Million Dollar Baby). What can I say - I was raised by wolves :-)


Yeat's gravestone


6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's a lovely poem. Coming as I do from an Irish family, I most fortunately never had the chance to not know about Yeats. I have a cousin who recites all of "Easter 1916" after dinner every Thanksgiving.

5:45 AM  
Blogger crystal said...

So different than my family, though my grandmother was of Irish descent ... I don't think I ever heard a poem read. The McNeely's tended more to reading the box scores and the OT :-)

11:53 AM  
Blogger cowboyangel said...

Crystal,

Nice to read the Yeats poem. So much great spiritual writing has been done through poetry in the last 100-150 years. I have a theory that in Western civilization, where spirituality has been caught between strict Materialism on one hand and a rigid reaction by organized religion on the other, the mystical tradition has been carried on by the poets. After all, St. John of the Cross was a poet, and he's been a huge influence on many modern poets. I think immediately of Theodore Roethke's "In a Dark Time," which I just re-read the other day. If you don't know his work you might check him out, especially his last book,The Far Field. And my first knowledge of Thomas Merton was as a poet. T.S. Eliot definitely has a mystical line, especially in The Four Quartets. "Burnt Norton" and "Little gidding" are amazing examples of spiritual writing in the 20th century. "Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

2:08 PM  
Blogger crystal said...

Cowboy - thanks for the poem, I hadn't read that poet before. I think you're right about poetry and religion. I didn't really start paying attention to poetry until a spiritual director I had started quoting poems :-). I'm still unlearned about it but it's fun to find new stuff.

5:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

were you watching Annie Hall by any chance?

10:14 PM  
Blogger crystal said...

Actually it was a made for tv movie, The Mermaid's Chair ... not very good but someone did quote the poem :)

12:02 AM  

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