Life and Existence

As the dead prey upon us, they are the dead in ourselves, awake, my sleeping ones, I cry out to you, disentangle the nets of being!

As the dead prey upon us, they are the dead in ourselves, awake, my sleeping ones, I cry out to you, disentangle the nets of being!

Now I adore my life With the Bird, the abiding Leaf, With the Fish, the questing Snail, And the Eye altering all; And I dance with William Blake For love, for Love’s sake.

Lord, hear me out, and hear me out this day: From me to Thee’s a long and terrible way.

Brooding on God, I may become a man. Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire; What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.

The soul has many motions, body one.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain!

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils, And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile.

Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

My secrets cry aloud. I have no need for tongue. My heart keeps open house, My doors are widely flung.

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks, Cut stems struggling to put down feet, What saint strained so much, Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks, Cut stems struggling to put down feet, What saint strained so much, Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?

If thou must choose Between the chances, choose the odd; Read the New Yorker; trust in God; And take short views.

And children swarmed to him like settlers. He became a land.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved.

To us he is no more a person Now but a whole climate of opinion.

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

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odor of death Offends the September night.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.