Poetry Review: “Cuchalain Comforted” by W.B. Yeats

Summer in the humid North Country quickly loses its power to surprise and delight. Somehow having to turn on central-air conditioning changes everything. In mid-January we run from heated car to heated home. We stand at windows and watch the world through panes of glass. On humid summer days we do same. Summer, just barely started, has already become a burden.

A brief hiatus at MontanaWriter has me thinking about change and beginnings.  The very first posting here, more than two years ago, began with one of my favorite Yeats’ poems. Since the audience for MontanaWriter at that point was at the most one, I am going to re-post part of that first post here with a few additions and changes.

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The Book of Genesis contains two creation stories. Some biblical literalist would no doubt have preferred that there be just the one. But those ancient redactors who put the bible together knew that beginnings are always messy affairs.

I have seen sketch drafts of poems that W.B. Yeats wrote. The finished product often-times bears little resemblance to the sketched idea. In one of his final poems, “Cuchalain Comforted,” written just a few weeks before his death, for example, the note “A shade recently arrived went through a valley in the country of the dead,” became:

Cuchalain Comforted
A man that had six mortal wounds, a man
Violent and famous, strode among the dead;
Eyes stared out of the branches and were gone.

Then certain Shrouds that muttered head to head
Came and were gone.  He leant upon a tree
As though to meditate on wounds and blood.

A Shroud that seemed to have authority
Among those bird-like things came, and let fall
A bundle of linen.  Shrouds by two and three

Came creeping up because the man was still.
And thereupon that linen-carrier said:
“Your life can grow much sweeter if you will

“Obey our ancient rule and make a shroud;
Mainly because of what we only know
The rattle of those arms makes us afraid.

“We thread the needles’ eyes, and all we do
All must together do.’ That done, the man
Took up the nearest and began to sew.

“Now must we sing and sing the best we can,
But first you must be told our character:
Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain

“Or driven from home and left to die in fear.’
They sang, but had nor human tunes nor words,
Though all was done in common as before;

They had changed their throats and had the throats of
birds.

Listening with a pencil and my ear, these are the lines I marked:

They sang, but had nor human tunes nor words,
Though all was done in common as before;

They had changed their throats and had the throats of
birds.

The simple dictated sketch, like the “bird-like” things, needed to be fully fleshed out. And so Yeats did… with 70 years of poetic skill, language, and symbolism.

It is difficult to “pull-out” just a few lines from this poem because I love the whole so much. It is the perfect summation of Yeats and Yeatsian themes. It is the perfect last poem of a great poet… it is the perfect poem.

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