Saturday, November 4, 2017

Tread Softly, Because You Tread on My Dreams

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 
Of night and light and the half-light;
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

- W. B. Yeats, The Cloths of Heaven

A poem that followed me ever since I watched that Christian Bale action movie "Equilibrium". I never understood why it stalked me all these years, and pop up in unexpected times and places. Nor do I know why I always feel melancholic when it comes around. Is it because I don't really dream?

I guess everything is circumstantial.

And so it happens that I crossed paths with it again, as we passed Drumcliff Cemetery in Clare, Ireland, where W.B. Yeats was laid to rest. It was unexpected, and we almost missed as we sped on by. Easy split-second decision to make the pit stop after I saw the sign.

The rest of the road-trip around Ireland and Northern Ireland was great too.