(after Jack B. Yeats)

The winter solstice tonight,

the coldest in many years:

by dawn the bridges will all be frozen.

A massive cliff of ice is

the center background of Yeats's

picture, and, as so often

in his late years, the figure

has his back turned to the observer.

He is not a young man. He bends

close over his step as I bend

over his image to watch him move

on through the silent lands.

The edges are soft. In his last years

Yeats used a palette knife

for a brush; seen close enough,

his pictures appear to be relief maps

of mountainous bright-colored

countries. It is impossible, here,

to tell the figure's bent forehead

from ice from sky. He is an old man,

and seems to be obliquely making

for a bridge that is either very

small or very far away, over

the frozen water, as he walks on

through the silent lands.

But the figure is not moving.

He is in mid-step, his knees are bent

forever, the ice-mountain rises in

the distance he will not reach,

not ever, he will not look at it,

but stares eternally at the little

bridge over the water that will

not stay water, but rises

into ice and a mountain of ice

and a sky so beautiful he can't

look, and can't move, and continues on.

There is no silence in this world,

none, not even for a old man frozen

above his walking. There are

only some things that

can't be said without breaking

from speech to the singing voice.

The skyscape is so beautiful it washes

over his arms, it makes him

a cloak. Old man, whose face

I never will see, who will never

reach your destination, don't move,

silence is in no time, and if your foot

should touch the frozen earth

it will shatter, you will break into song.

You can see the painting that this poem draws from in the virtual exhibit

A Land of Heart's Desire:  300 Years of Irish Art.