Thoor Ballylee

I, THE poet William Yeats,

With old mill boards and sea-green slates,

And smithy work from the Gort forge,

Restored this tower for my wife George.

Fifty years from first reading these words

I ascend the winding stairs inside Yeats’

Thoor Balylee, passing as I do cold floors

repaired to create his work rooms and bed.

In restored cloisters of Norman masons,

seeing the rough artistry of blind beauty.

Of battlements abandoned for centuries.

Before that ruin came, for centuries,

Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees

Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs.

As Yeats summoned his rambling celebrants

in these rooms chaos surrounded him. The 

Irish Civil War, cruel murder in Gort village.

But the great man was untouchable, both

sides left him to his work, safe from bullets.

Allowing him to wonder in his tower keep

“Did all old men and women, rich and poor,

Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door,

Whether in public or in secret rage

As I do now against old age?” 

Reaching for the prosaic light of day I

approach a window. What appears a bale

of straw. Looking into the branches I

see the yellowed eyes of crow nestlings

and, suddenly, the appearance of their mother,

her urgent Caw! telling the corbillats that, as

Yeats wished, the modern ear may rhyme 

but the stillness of The Tower tells the time.

 “And may these characters remain

When all is ruin once again.”