(One for the summer…Two leaders, any place, anytime)
When Heaney met Yeats
When two songbirds met together they flew
O’er buttock carved hills distant and blue
Each sang of the flowers both petal and cup
And daisies like quail eggs stood sunny side up
Dream-trees were laden with poetic fruit
They drifted on by as God played his lute
Then onwards to Dublin a childhood abode
An old friend was passing along Raglan Road
They sailed up the Foyle and one soul stood proud
As dandelion seeds paratrooped in a crowd
A Rieger played requiem and old Boolavogue
When one recalled Sligo and sweet Garavogue
A half moon was hanging off-white broken bread
Wine oozing from springs and nothing was dead
They viewed old Drumcliff as windmills did turn
Like great ship propellers the oceans to churn
Oak leaves were fluttered and stirred in the trees
Like words in their thousands kissed by the breeze
Oh albumen Ireland of inkwells and quills
Where poems sprout greenly from each spaded drill
Through wide fields of neon when rape is in bloom
Two wordsmiths on horseback are minting new tunes
In gold cloths of heaven they’re clad for all time
Each line in their cosmos forever shall rhyme.
Tom Clancy.
tomclancy 