In Memory of W. B. Yeats

         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.

    
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