To Various Poets After Yeats Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

to the poet William Butler Yeats



break the glass on the household pavements

before the hearth or in the dark

perhaps some inner angel or not told them

anyway they did.

all memory of him

eager to erase

that they might win the race themselves

if he were eliminated; wishing themselves good luck.

you have not won what you thought to have won

i tell you in this poem you will mostly likely not read

still he walks among the reeds and ponders fate

and the language poetical, Ireland dreaming through him

and fairytale, the mysterious Rose, the wherewithal of Songs

the aftermath of quarrels and

will not shut up his music in a case

because it suits you, aftercomers.

Yeats still lives

you cannot take him into captivity

you cannot make his angel fly from his books

and become obscure though he has died.

though you have, possibly,

in your own ways, tried.

mary angela douglas 4 august 2023