A Three-Part Post Featuring a Bit About a Poem and Another About Feeling Better and then a Third About Joys

William Butler Yeats

In the fall of 1980 I was living in Boston. One day I was in a subway station — forget which one — where I discovered this poem written on a sign.

And slowing down behind a row of cars

Mumble a little sadly how love said

If she had boots she’d walk upon
Your head

And hid her face amid a crowded bar

I was immediately entranced by the poem. The rhythm, the tone, the ambiguity, the sadness. I copied it down in a notebook and later added it to the journal I kept at that time. Yesterday I was going through those journals and re-discovered the poem. Now with the power of Google, I could perhaps find the author and maybe more of the poem. Surely this was the work of a prominent poet.

It wasn’t. Or at least none that the world’s most powerful search engine could find. However the first thing that came up in my search was a poem by William Butler Yeats. Note particularly how the anonymous poet borrowed from Butler’s last four lines.

When You Are Old

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;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

So my anonymous friend was merely a plagiarist. I still like his variation on Yeats — which is what I will henceforth refer to the poem as. Variation on Yeats.

End part one.

Begin part two.

I’ve been on a new medication for the last six weeks that has kept depression at bay and without any attendant side effects. This is very good news. HOWEVER, it does not keep me from being sad, which I get from time-to-time. Sadness is normal, though it plagues me more than most people. Damn it! The difference between depression and sadness is that depression is all encompassing and does not need a reason to visit. It also tells you that misery is your natural state. It can even poke at you when you’re feeling good, telling you the joy won’t last. Sadness is different in that you know its temporal and visits for a reason, albeit often an existential one. 

My new wonder drug does little to offset my anxiety which can be acute. Yes, I’ve struggled with more than my fair share of mental, emotional issues. It all gets enervating but there is so much happiness on the side that I’ve managed to plug along. Examples of the good things in part three as here is where part two ends.

And here is the beginning of part three. In the last few days I’ve listened to a lot of good music and yesterday added further to my CD collection. Right now I’ve got Dylan on. Later I could sample The Beatles, Joplin, Hendrix, the Doors, Amy Winehouse, Sidney Bechet, George Michael, The Who or any number of others. Nice. Music helps chase away the blues. I recommend it for sadness or depression. Maybe not so much dirges, but you knew that.

I’ve also been reading a particularly good book, A Separate Peace by John Knowles. It’s been around since 1959 and I’ve finally gotten around to it. Brilliant book. Shame Knowles evidently never cranked out anything approaching it. I have many more books to get around to in the coming days/weeks/months/years. Quite the backlog, actually. So there’s plenty of that.

Last night the missus and I watched The Philadelphia Story, one of 274 films in my extensive DVD collection. Like many of my DVDs I have the beautiful Criterion edition. I’ve seen the film maybe a dozen times and once already this year but it’s the kind of movie one can come back to again and again and never tire of. So I have films aplenty to choose from including what TCM presents and what’s on the Criterion Channel along with any number of ways one can watch a motion picture these days. Blessed times.

I’m also seven months into my latest novel and enjoying most every second of writing it. Lucky man. 

One wonders how I can ever be sad but then if you ever pick up a newspaper you can figure out some reasons right there, not to mention the whole mortality business. This is the conclusion of part three and also the entire post.