RECALLING YEATS

Twisting rhymes into a locket,

a pixie’s mirror to bygone times,

poems you could carry around

inside your pocket

 

to be pulled out

whenever

you found yourself fumbling

over the glassy-eyed indifference

of a girl

 

begging to be noticed

to be taken

seriously

 

if only for as long as it took to shed your pants.

 

That’s the way I read

not just him but

pretty much every poet of my youth--

 

minstrels of the heart, precursors

to shortcutting

a hard night’s labor--

 

drippings to be left behind  

as a reminder

of the magic only a silver-tongued devil knew

how to make slither off a tongue

 

When you are old and gray

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths

Like Troy in its splendor and ruin …

 

Even now, having traipsed the southside

longer than most, I still

can’t see the byzantine logic of

an old man whispering to what is past

in hope of finding what’s still to come.

 

Like then, like always, the key

to unlocking a woman’s reluctance

is the knot between her ears

 

I love you stirs

but I love you like …

 

reading Yeats in the spring …

 

still unlocks the gates

youth never forgets.

Ken e Bujold 

Reviews

[Lorry]

Ahh, the schoolboys version of ignore anything at your peril that the schoolgirls adore. There was certainly a male female divide in thinking that Yeats was a punishment or a pleasure, but would they listen to me, a mere boy try to tell them that and invade their games of ropes and hopscotch too? They just looked at me and gave me what I now know to be the tut of being dismissed.
And they never even let me know the secrets of that alien and confusing game either. Or understand them for that matter! 😃

[Betty Hermelee]

I love you like...is the key from Yeat's poetry... and it seems one is never too old to enjoy romance even for a reluctant woman...."youth never forgets".... I love this poem Ken, brings me back to Victorian times.....and the locket people use to carry around with a photo or a poem the could readily view...
Warmly, B