[A roadside flower, ready to spread it’s seed. Co Sligo, Ireland. Photo is mine.]

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

~~from When You are Old, by W. B. Yeats

It was an August day, forty-one years ago when I first walked through the gate of the Drumcliff Parish churchyard in Co Sligo, Ireland. There were few tourists about, perhaps two retired English teachers, maybe a struggling poet or a fifteen-year-old girl who loved a boy from afar. Or a girl she had known since she was eight. I was by myself, that day, as I found the black limestone. I walked to the stone wall and sat against the sharp edges. Puffy cotton-like seeds swept gently and slowly past me, like large snowflakes. Likely from a shrub shown in the photo above. I opened my journal and a book of poems. I found the one I wanted to read quietly to myself.

Under bare Ben Bulben’s Head

In Drumcliffe churchyard Yeats is laid.

An ancestor was rector there

Long years ago, a church stands near,

By the road an ancient cross,

No marble, no conventional phrase;

On limestone quarried near the spot

By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye

On life, on death.

Horseman, pass by!

[Photo is mine.]

I had just stood beside the grave of W. B. Yeats, a man who wrote his own epitaph. How many get to do that? Yeats has always been one of my favorite poets. I don’t claim to have his entire opus but I’ve read a fair number. My father, once he discovered his Irish roots, was able to quote one or two. One of his favorite was “The Fiddler of Dooney” and “The Wild Swans at Coole”.

There are important people in my life, three such people, that I have tried to share things that I find vital to me. I got this need from my father who shared places and ideas and books with me.

I returned to Drumcliff again in 2015 with Brian and Mariam. I asked Brian to sit quietly on a stone while I read the lines above. It was likely I read one or two others in an attempt to instill an interest in Irish poetry. I hope it worked. That visit and that moment of time when I read them poems completed my mission to share with two people whom I love.

Not ten days ago I visited the grave for the third time. The tourists were milling about and it was difficult to find a place for me to read, for perhaps the tenth time, a few of my favorite verses.

Now, with my son and my wife hopefully hearing and appreciating Yeats, it is left to me to share my love for the poet and this country with my daughter, Erin. She may already have stood beside the limestone and the inscription, but she has not heard me read to her. Perhaps in the near future I can pass my love for Yeats to my grandson.

I took a large number of color slides in 1984 but this time I was armed with an iPhone. Yes, and equipped with the ability to shoot video. Which is a moot point because WordPress is not allowing me to insert said video right here into this slot. Or, maybe it’s the WiFi here at the hotel, or maybe it’s just my bad Irish luck.

[A quiet corner of the Drumcliff churchyard. Photo is mine.]

But, I digress.

Yes, Yeats is my comfort in duress and my companion in the turmoil of life’s challenges. But there is one final sharing I have to relate to you, dear reader.

In 2004, I was tasked with giving the eulogy at my father’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Church in Owego. I told of my difficulties in trying to compress ninety years of a man’s life into fifteen minutes. I was serious, I was funny (relating anecdotes from his years at IBM…which made the priest slap his knee laughing). And, then at the end, I chose to quote a Yeats poem that most closely spoke to my father’s nature and his desire to find a quiet place to think.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innishfree,

And a small cabin will I build there, of clay and wattles made;

I read the three verses of “The Lake Isle of Innishfree” but I did not do it well or without a pause. You see, I had to stop and weep.

It was nearly an impossible job. But I finished it.

It was a fitting way to say good-bye to my dad, who really started the whole story years ago when he told me about an Irish poet he so loved.