The Poetry Show: Crossing the Equinox

    Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Oliver, Rilke, Yeats, McGrath, Kunitz -- No Shelter for the Homeless?"

 

 

"...So let us go on, cheerfully enough, this and every crisping day, though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed."

Mary Oliver

Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case This Episode Recorded September 24, 2025

The Wild Swans at Coole

by William Butler Yeats

 

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

 

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