FOR JEREMY

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
—W.B. Yeats, ‘Among School Children’

There must be another way, he’s saying
and there is: only the man grown child is wise
as the ancient Chinese Taoists knew
and the triumphal trumping ego will never—
so here he is on the 6pm News, among school children
playing djembe as if for the first time
tentatively with his fingertips
sing-saying Harmony as the kids join in,
the word so lightly engraved on their T shirts
that is the truth from spirit
of a radical innocence, transmitted—
through these beings of the future, if there is to be,
if there is another way, which only the heart knows:
that after experience, innocence returns
and is a new day as far as the eyes can see.

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Jay Ramsay

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