After Yeats

See my heart broken with words
By words, too bright to be swallowed
Through words untouched in awe
For their beauty burns and rages
In a radiance of remembrance
A knife through the moon

Between these leather bindings
Where memory spilled my tears
See my heart splintered by sound
Shattered by the spell
Of words shaped of silver
Glistened gilt with golden light

Find here my heart
Broken by dreams


©Edwina Peterson Cross

"He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven"
from the Collected Works of William Butler Yeats

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)