As we count down to the Mass. Poetry Festival

[Michael]

I have been absent the last while as I work to promote and help
coordinate the Massachusetts Poetry Festival that actually happens
this Thursday through Sunday. See all the details at www.masspoetry.org
. We are also really pleased that the Mass. Poetry Outreach Project
(MassPOP) has funded and fielded its first poets to take poetry in the
school and community of North Allston. But now all is focused on the
Festival.
And so I thought the grand master, WB Yeats might have something to
say to us about poetry and craft and love and age and all the other
things that keep me up at 2;00 in the morning these days. So here is
Adam's Curse.

And I will leave you tonight with one thought. In his 1914 volume of
poems Responsibilities, Yeats has an epigraph well worth pondering:
"In dreams begins responsibility,"

Adam's Curse
WB Yeats

We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'

. . . . . . . . . And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, 'To be born woman is to know-
Although they do not talk of it at school-
That we must labour to be beautiful.'

I said, 'It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.