Improvisation Louis Gilmore Your hands are perfumes That haunt the yellow hangings Of a room. Your hands are melodies That rise and fall In silver basins. Your hands are silks That soothe the purple eyelids Of the sick. Your hands are ghosts That trouble the blue shadows Of a garden. Your hands are poppies For which my lips are hungry And athirst. Poems William Butler Yeats The Wild Swans at Coole The trees are in their autumn beauty The woodland paths are dry Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine and fifty swans. The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count. I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings. But now they drift on the still water Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build; By what lake’s edge or pool Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day To find they have flown away? I have looked upon these brilliant creatures And now my heart is sore. All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight The first time on this shore The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old, Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. October, 1916. Presences This night has been so strange that it seemed As if the hair stood up on my head. From going down of the sun I have dreamed That women laughing, or timid or wild, In rustle of lace or silken stuff, Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read All I have rhymed of that monstrous thing Returned and yet unrequited love. They stood in the door and stood between My great wood lectern and the fire Till I could hear their hearts beating: One is a harlot, and one a child That never looked upon man with desire, And one, it may be, a queen. November, 1915. Men Improve With the Years