Apologies to W B Yeats

70. 28 August 2021

Innisfree

I cannot arise and go now, much less to Innisfree,

Nor a small cabin build there of clay and wattles laid:

Maybe a tent or a caravan or a nice Airbnb,

And I’d be alone in the quiet glade.

*

And I would have some peace there, if I turn my phone off first,

And my laptop and my tablet, though I must keep track of things:

There’s a funny noise in the grass and the hills are green at worst

And the dusk empty of small birds’ wings.

*

I will bloody go there for always night and day,

I hear lake water lapping on the chalets by the shore.

I don’t know what I long for, but on the pavements grey,

I hear it ever in my deep heart’s core.

*

PS Please read the original poem by W B Yeats “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” I am so happy that, to judge from the picture, the original island on Lough Gill, Ireland, is still untouched!

Coffee?