Visiting Yeats When The Center Cannot Hold

On the road to Donegal
Ben Bulden’s Head looks down on
where he rests in turf near the oak and
iron door of Drumcliff’s gray
stone church his epitaph in gold
carved in limestone slate-gray:

     Cast a cold eye
     On life, on death
     Horseman, pass by!

In this land of poet-politicians
I’m one of those who can’t pass by
nor cast cold eye on one whose
quarrel with himself was so
prosodic, whose peace dropped slow
at Innisfree and puddles of
young men’s blood polluted
Ireland’s bogs and bee-fed glades.

I stop to sing whatever is well
made while other horsemen no
less reverent heed his epitaph
cast cold eye and indeed pass by.

But the best of those who do as
well as those who don’t are not
enough to hold the center and
shredded with too much passion
worlds fall apart as he warned.