I 
He disappeared in the dead of winter: 
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, 
And snow disfigured the public statues; 
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. 
What instruments we have agree 
The day of his death was a dark cold day. 

Far from his illness 
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, 
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; 
By mourning tongues 
The death of the poet was kept from his poems. 

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, 
An afternoon of nurses and rumours; 
The provinces of his body revolted, 
The squares of his mind were empty, 
Silence invaded the suburbs, 
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. 

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities 
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, 
To find his happiness in another kind of wood 
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. 
The words of a dead man 
Are modified in the guts of the living. 

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow 
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse, 
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed, 
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom, 
A few thousand will think of this day 
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual. 

What instruments we have agree 
The day of his death was a dark cold day. 

II 

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: 
The parish of rich women, physical decay, 
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. 
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, 
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives 
In the valley of its making where executives 
Would never want to tamper, flows on south 
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, 
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, 
A way of happening, a mouth. 




III 

Earth, receive an honoured guest: 
William Yeats is laid to rest. 
Let the Irish vessel lie 
Emptied of its poetry. 

In the nightmare of the dark 
All the dogs of Europe bark, 
And the living nations wait, 
Each sequestered in its hate; 

Intellectual disgrace 
Stares from every human face, 
And the seas of pity lie 
Locked and frozen in each eye. 

Follow, poet, follow right 
To the bottom of the night, 
With your unconstraining voice 
Still persuade us to rejoice; 

With the farming of a verse 
Make a vineyard of the curse, 
Sing of human unsuccess 
In a rapture of distress; 

In the deserts of the heart 
Let the healing fountain start, 
In the prison of his days 
Teach the free man how to praise. 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "kasper salonen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 3:45 PM
Subject: Re: Early Snap - Famous


>a poem should never have the word 'poet' or 'poem' in them, as an
> undeviating rule.
> a poem about _the_ poet is even wronger.
> 
> you've definitely posted better poems onto this list Janet. I wasn't
> really entertained by this at all, I'm afraid.
> 
> KS
> 
> On 13/02/07, Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Nearly Wednesday.
>> This is not at all what I set out to write!
>> And the ending in particular is crap.
>> But the Muse has flown and I want to go to bed now. Goodnight!
>>
>> Janet
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> Famous
>>
>> When I was 17 a palm-reader told me,
>> "you're going to be famous", but
>> it hasn't happened. Yet
>> I can hardly go anywhere without
>> meeting some person who knows me
>>
>> and when I recite my poems at readings
>> in a dramatic black outfit
>> some people act
>> like fans, waiting for a tidbit,
>> a chapbook autographed, saying kind things.
>>
>> In a dream I visit the main residence
>> of a man famous as any president
>> (he is, indeed, a poet,
>> but he is not famous for that)
>> and his famous wife, sleek and gracious.
>>
>> She greets me politely. I tell her my name
>> and am suddenly aware of the state
>> of my clothes: the ragged t-shirt
>> and stained jeans in which I'd slept
>> under a tree, in the rain, earlier in the dream.
>>
>> I hope she forgets me, but people rarely do.
>> But no-one will ever forget
>> her. The poor woman can't
>> just sleep out on the street
>> in old clothes, the way poets do.
>>
>>                    A first draft by Janet Jackson
>>                    Tue Feb 13 22:45:19 WST 2007
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
>> Poems at Proximity:
>> http://www.proximity.webhop.net
>>
>> The choice is between nonviolence and nonexistence.
>>                                  Martin Luther King Jr.
>> s
>>