The Fisherman / Yeats

Although I can see him still,
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It’s long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I’d looked in the face
What I had hoped ’twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.
Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, ‘Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.’

W.B. Yeats

Sixty Two

I will remind you as each
number passes the one before.
I have chosen to number those
times I am captivated with
that part of you that makes me
smile in such a naughty little way.
When you walk away
or climb steps in front of
me, while we are out walking,
it is not a coincidence that I
let you walk a step or two
in front of me, or that I
turn and watch you walk away.

You seem taken aback
with the thought that me,
admiring your dupa
would be something
I do because I am influenced
from love and I would
only notice such a pretty
thing because I love you.

It is not.
I notice every part of you
every day because every day
I fall more in love with you.

@ @