Lay for the Day 
28th
January
1939: W.B. Yeats dies in Menton in France. After the Second World War, his
bones were brought home to be laid in the churchyard of Drumcliff, County
Sligo, according to the request in ‘Under Ben Bulben’, one of his
last poems. Subsequently, doubt has been cast on the authenticity of the remains
that were translated.
Exile
Far
from a hero and far from a saint,
either
in an action frozen
or
burning in the lamplit paint,
you
were discomfortably chosen
to
stand dumbfounded in the fellside light,
to
witness all
the
human night,
and
have what, in youth, came
as
words, come in your dry September years
as
shame-
cold
tears
you
don’t let fall,
too
bent on rhyme –
an
exile from eternity,
in love with time.
Monkey
reaches
for
the moon in a stream,
in
a Chinese story:
canŐt
let go his grip or catch her glory
or
shun her gliding beam,
hung
between act and dream.
Fall
through the bright
circle
of desire and sink down
into
unillumination and drown,
one
sage teaches.
John Gibbens, from Makings ’89-’91
The
Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar
