SLIGO BLUES
POEM by Guido Vermeulen,
March 2014
This is the cave
where Yeats slept
explained the
Sligo guide to us.
Did he sleep in
a cage?
someone from the
tour group asked.
Maybe his house
was one,
you decide that
after our visit.
I smiled about the
misunderstanding,
even small
communication is difficult,
poems however are
personal and universal
enigmas at the
same time.
What are you
thinking about?
The young son of
the guide could read my old face.
What your father
meant was that Yeats
slept and dreamed
in these caves,
in the beauty of
these mountains, in the green valleys,
in the nearby
clouds, so near they touch our heads,
in the golden
sunlight and the silvery moon one,
in the hearts of
the people who have the privilege of living here,
in the soul of
every one who reads him or has read him.
You really must
love Mister Yeats?
Love dies
naturally, I replied.
But the dreams of
the dead are made of
spoken, written
and abandoned poems.
Abandoned?
Mallarmé said that
poets do not finish poems,
they only abandom
them.
I add to that: it
is a bit like the dead, they only abandon life.
Mister Yeats did
that too, that’s why we are here today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._B._Yeats
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