The Later Yeats

Where he sought symbols, we, for him, must seek

A metaphor, lest mere praise should fall short

Of how the poems of his last years set

Our standards for the speech that brings the real

To integrated order dearly bought,

Catching the way complexity would speak

If it had one voice. This, he makes us feel,

Is where all deeper meanings are well met,

Contained in a majestic vessel made

Out of the sea it sails on, yet so strong

We never, watching it our whole lives long,

Doubt its solidity. All else may fade,

But this stands out as if it had been sent

To prove it can have no equivalent.

Even his first things were wind-driven boats.

A coracle would have its speed enhanced

By some queen elf who stood with gauze shift spread,

Materialising from the twilight mist.

Slim dhows, as his romantic urge advanced,

Sliced through the East. A little navy floats

In his early pages. Sleek sloops joined the list

When more substantial things asked to be said.

His wild-swan racing schooners heeled and ran

Cargo from Athens, Bethlehem and Rome,

Or the body of an Irish airman home

Across the gale. The full soul of a man

Was on display: sound craft of trim outline

Criss-crossed the billows. All of his design,

These would have been enough to make him great:

The caravelles that reached Byzantium

Alone proved him unmatched. Then, at the heart

Of this flotilla, as if light were haze,

Something appeared to strike the viewer dumb:

A huge three-decker fighting ship of state.

Acres of air caught in her tiered arrays

Of raw silk, she made clear, in every part,

All of her million parts were cleanly wrought

To fit together with no need of nails.

From gun-decks upward to top-gallant sails

She was one artefact, a cloud drawn taut

By force, so far beyond its builder’s mind

It felt for him, and saw where he was blind.

Tea-clipper-tall but at the waterline

Three times the width, she had the looks to quell

Resistance instantly by show of might:

Empires would knuckle under. Ireland

Itself would kneel to see her breast the swell

With such bulk. But develop and refine

This image as we may, and as we planned –

Down to the shining brass, sheets chalky white,

Glazed lanterns, mullioned windows, oaken rails –

It will not serve the turn without a sense

Of brute strength tempered by benevolence.

The monarch reigns supreme because her sails,

From cinquecento chapel walls low down

On up through salon panels to her crown

Of screens, woodcuts and painted fans, are all

Unchallenged masterpieces. Her curved hull

Was moulded by the cave walls of Lascaux

And stamped with its motifs. But what we hear,

Not what we see, confirms the miracle

And makes the metaphor. We’re held in thrall

By music. Music lush, music austere,

All music ever heart-felt, holds the flow

Of splendour in one place. Not thought alone –

Thought least of all, because it was his fate

To grow more infantile as it grew late –

Could build this thing, nor was it cut and sewn

Or hewn solely by touch, or sealed by skill.

A feat of the self-sacrificing will,

The peaceful man of war is here to prove

Any attempt to emulate her air

Of grandeur invites ridicule, unless

We, too, pour everything into the task

Of building something that will still be there

When we are gone. And that means all we love

And more, as Yeats knew when he wore a mask

To quell the self, thinking its pettiness

Could be faced down. It can’t, but it can be

Tapped and diverted to an empty space

Where something permanent can take its place,

Shaped for the voyage to eternity

Out of our tears of weakness at the way

The thing we mean means more than we can say.

Worse than absurd, then –witless, in the end –

To trace him through his visionary schemes

And systems, or pay grave attention to

Those last affairs, boosted by monkey glands,

His patient wife scorned as a dotard’s dreams

If more unreal. No scholarship can mend

The error of not seeing all demands

For human truth are vain. Few things are true

About the life except the work. Yeats found

His final glory when his jade and gold

Were joined by rag and bones to sink and fold

Into the flux of images and sound

That formed a magic ship to win the war

Against time, which is just a metaphor

For the battle to make sense of growing old,

And bless the ebb tide. It is outward bound,

Fit for the launch of what we have to give

The future, though that be a paltry thing.

Our house is flooded and our books are drowned,

The embers of our passion are stone cold,

We count the minutes we have left to live,

Yet even now it is of love we sing,

And for a paragon we have the vast

Swan-songs of Yeats that brought his depths to light.

Among school children or on All Soul’s Night,

Humble or proud, he saved the best for last

And gave it to the waves – but no. There is

No ship. Just words, and all of them are his.

-- Standpoint, October 2009

Poetry