Alice Miller
Air
Air
He, the poet William Yeats;
you the reader, approach his forge
the cloud gulps, the rhyme’s
not given.
As the plane crawls over
green lumped lands
cloud gives way and under, Ireland
its last white wisps
from the mouth of a god who’s coughed
up sky since birth, not dared look down since;
where all the machines of the world in their honesty
are learning as once we learned the piano,
how to play the brain.
Over Dublin, a black cloud bloats
like a big chap bulging
off the edge of his seat;
asking how many towns
make a jewelry box: gold chains,
diamonds, occasional emeralds,
jewels strung by so many fingers,
hands, heads. On fat sharp threads
we dangle them before the eyes of our dead kings.
Above the plane
you the poet still watch,
as we draw near your forge.
We’ve come for your Byzantium.
Lower your golden wings.