The Poets’ Forum members met on St. Patrick’s Day at the Beverly Public Library and enjoyed an informative and fun program on Irish songs, rhythm and poetry, presented by Mary Micelli. She delighted us by playing the tunes on the piano and then challenged us to write lyrics to her last selection.
Next on the agenda is our Open Mic on April 21, at the Beverly Library, 11 a.m., in celebration of National Poetry Month. Winners of the Naomi Cherkofsky contest (deadline April 1 for submission; see flyer) will be invited to read first, followed by those who sign up.
Hope you come join our celebration!
As I often do, I am including a poem by a great poet for your enjoyment, this time, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, one by William Butler Yeats
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
