Gold. Beef? //

silver tongue,
golden ear,
Lover absent,
garden near—

The title of this poem is homonymous with my husband’s name.

This poem, from further back, has a pretty obvious W. B. Yeats reference that I forgot to mention. “Sailing to Byzantium” is an old favorite of everybody’s, including mine. I feel like I understand it differently now than when I first read it, ~25 years ago.

I love Yeats and would never write against him on purpose. But “Military Parade” does express a reversal; and then I noticed how “Sailing to Byzantium”, with its explicit goldsmithery, is roughly opposite to “Begging Season”, which is earthy and humble, in material, scale, texture. And then I noticed . . . how consistently not-gold my poetry is, where gold is postponed, doubted, displaced. Even my homonymous husband poem rejects its golden ring. A cascade of questions followed, beginning with: Whence the pattern? It wasn’t quite calculated. Things just seemed true at the time.

Am I weird about gold? Why? How did I get that way?

If I wrote more gold poetry, would I attract more mean green ($)?

A mischievous question like that is based on an esoteric, witchcrafty mode that Yeats and I share, by lineage (his being mine, and he being part of mine). I don’t dismiss the utility of mantra. And I wouldn’t put it past him, to craft gold into presence. So. Could I write a gold poem? Should I? What would mine be?

Finding in myself no poem of gold—Is this (would Yeats say) a sign that I lack imaginative ambition, symbolic understanding, spiritual daring?

Gold does appear, in my crafted imagination, my images and dreams, but rarely is its presence pure or simple. The negation—an optical or organic filtering—of gold feels important to me. It certainly reflects a material condition; I see little gold in my day-to-day. Does it also express a worthy poetic commitment, to limit gold’s presence—to the very limits?

. . . Do I have (vegan) beef with Yeats?

Consider my family, friends, and allies. What is the meaning of gold, in my community? How does gold function in poetry—mine, others'? Commence a catalogue of golden ships. (Fascinating, for sure; forthcoming, maybe—this would be an amazing list. I have a certain intuition that Phaedrus will back me up; and Socrates never would, but the Republic—seminal, in this respect—experiments with pure, psycho-political gold.)

Does the meaning of gold change based on history? Upon witnessing newer distortions—the cruel and tacky deployment of gold, the dictator’s ballroom, the ecocidal tyranny of it all—would Yeats himself admit symbolic defeat? (Doubtful.)

Or is there a—poetic, erotic, alchemical, theological—gold standard? Is gold truer than history?

The narrator frames himself as a refugee, sick with desire and bereft of self-knowledge. He is not unlike the beggar. He calls upon sages—emergent from God’s holy fire!—to teach him how to sing. He remakes his own body out of gold, and Byzantium—like a halfway house of gold birds on golden boughs—becomes his artificial refuge. The lords and ladies of Byzantium are his final, appreciative audience. He entertains them with gold-wrought songs of the very world—natural, historical—that he has fled.

The narrator is rescued from nature by his own luxuriant hypothesis, this golden ear. Wonderfully, he has crafted his savior into presence. And it might be us. But let’s be honest—was a poet ever rescued by gold?

Or does a poet set out to rescue gold?

. . . To rescue gold, from what?

I believe these are deep and important questions, all of which touch on power and the image. I also observe that questions of gold, not unlike worlds of gold, initiate a seduction. Yeats’ poem embodies the transcendent height of a poetic (symbolic, alchemical, technological) fantasy, rescuing as it escapes. While my senses slip ever so comfortably into gold’s embrace.

I see the allure . . . and it feels like a rub.

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