A new poem from Harry Clifton, inspired by W B Yeats

On Saturday Night, Beautiful Lofty Things at the National Concert Hall will celebrate the life and work of WB Yeats, by asking some of Ireland’s best known artists and performers to respond to the poet’s work.

Among those taking part are John Banville, Sebastian Barry, Tara Bergin, Eavan Boland, Aoife Duffin, Lisa Dwan, John Montague and Marty Rea. Music will be provided by vocalists Iarla Ó Lionáird and Michelle O’Rourke, fiddler Martin Hayes, and pianist Michael McHale. Composer/pianist Bill Whelan, harper Cormac De Barra and singer Flo McSweeney will also perform a selection of Whelan’s songs. Tickets are €25 and €35.

Poetry Ireland is also publishing a special Yeats 2015 anniversary edition of Poetry Ireland Review, edited by Vona Groarke, that features new poems from Irish and international poets such as Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds, Philip Schultz, Sinéad Morrissey and Harry Clifton. It will be available on the night, and also from poetryireland.ie. Ticket bundles, including a copy of the review and a ticket for the concert are €36 and €41.

Today, tomorrow and on Friday, The Irish Times will publish one poem from the collection. Margaret Atwood’s contribution kicks us off below, with further poems to come from Harry Clifton and Rita Ann Higgins.

CHEZ JEANETTE

My fiftieth year had come and gone.

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop …

– WB Yeats

And so do I, past fifty now,

In the gilt and mirror-glass

Of Chez Jeanette’s immigrant bar.

Wine, cassis, an overflow

Spilt on the table – marble

Like Yeats’ but more of a mess.

Behind the bottles on the shelf

A real, a transcendental self

Is hiding. Great Master,

Tell me, as you sat with your cup,

And grace came down like interruption,

Did these flakes of ceiling plaster

Also drown in your dregs?

The fallen angels, broken spirits

Told like tea-leaves, disinherited,

Sold into Egypt? Child-wives, pregnant,

Hide the future, keep it dark.

Splinter-groups of young Turks

Stand at the counter, arguing.

And the saucers of small change

Accumulate. The minutes, the hours,

If grace or visitation

Ever enter . . . A prostitute,

Bottom of the range,

Her hangdog client, middle-aged,

Go next door, to the short-time hotel.

In the hour that God alone sees,

We are all anonymities,

No-one finds us, we cannot be paged

In Dante’s Heaven, Swedenborg’s Hell

Or the visions of William Yeats.

And whether the hour is early or late

Or out of time, I do not know.

But for now, it comes down to this –

The marble top, the wine, cassis,

And the finite afterglow.