Monday, June 30, 2008

what does W.B. Yeats have to do with me?



The fourth stanza of William Butler Yeats' "Adam's Curse" is one of my favorite of all poetry. The poem is about love and work and the moon, of course. Here it is:


We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years


No matter how many times I read it, recite it, hear it, I am stunned by the fluidity of the lines, the easy way they roll one into the other. It makes me think of writing, the labor of it and the inspiration. The relentlessness of life and its laborious beauty.




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