YEATS COUNTRY

Forever they spiral up the tower

smoothing stone with their shoulders

to stand at peak and mimic an hour

of a ponderous gyre about the sun

while cars come and go

and a green bottle lurches towards Sligo

shadows collide on a wall

silhouettes   leaves

sparrows flying up under the eaves

above a secluded room away from the throng

where priapic youth and gaunt girl

play socket and sprong

careless juxtapositions

ambiguities    a cockney with a courtly girl

a book across a wallet

and when meaning is expressed

collisions and repulsions

easier to own a Venus

than to stroke a muse's breast

To enter Yeats country find a Murphy girl

a modern day Maud Gonne

clothed in granny's furs from Harrods

who will bring you to the tower

leaving you there    a lighthouse keeper

dashing your hopes of spending an hour

in a secluded room

in Yeats bleak country poets stand agape

oblivious of landscape

gnawing old bones

questioning the memory of stones

that have long leached light from shape

looking for her foot's lost imprint

where her shadow lingers indistinct

So besiege the tower with determined tread

stand at the peak and demand to know

with cross knit brows and sculptured head

why a green bottle lurches towards Sligo

© Dick Russell, 2013