Drowning in
the Dardanelles
I'll never write like William Butler Yeats:
His poems overflowed from a full life,
Knew death, knew love, knew strife,
Knew Plato's shadows and ancestral dates,
And had a George called wife.
Whereas this frame is but an empty shell,
A taught skin that will not play as a drum,
A skeleton made dumb
By vacant days turned to a living hell,
And plenty more to come.
If I could laugh I'd laugh and split my sides,
Expose the dull interior to the void,
While heart no longer buoyed
Would sink beneath the ever-rolling tides
And birds disturbed would turn their heads, annoyed. |
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