Tick Tock

I was in Dublin a few weeks back working with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra.

An afternoon off afforded me a few hours to take in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity College and a handful of other highlights. Although the major sights were nice, it was a chance encounter that ended up being the most meaningful visit of the day. Searching for a caffeine hit I turned down a promising road but instead of a coffee shop I found the National Library; a sign told me that it housed a free W.B Yeats exhibit.

I love Yeats and I love free stuff, so I wandered in.

It was a beautifully curated little exhibit contained in one large and dimly lit room (it wasn’t for ambience, it was to preserve the many original manuscripts on display). In the center of the space was a semi-enclosed circle with a few benches, and recordings of readings of some of Yeats’s best-known poems. As I took a seat inside, a gently lilting voice began “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.

I have looked upon those 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.

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?

W.B. Yeats 1919

Some sudden tears surprised me, as did the fact that I found myself mouthing the words silently. It took me a minute to realize that I had memorized “The Wild Swans at Coole” way back in my high school years when I was on the speech team.

I’ve always loved that poem, and not just because I’m drawn to melancholy poetry (it’s my Japanese side – we love a sad ending), but because it so gracefully expresses humankind’s uneasy relationship with change and the passage of time. And I realized how acutely I felt this conflicted connection in that moment as I was taken back to my teenage days in that moment, the crushing heartache of loss, the plodding inevitability of age. My knees felt extra creaky when I stood up.

But that’s the funny thing about time. It’s easy enough to bemoan a lost youth through a hazy rose-colored nostalgia, but more difficult to see that it’s only through living the life I’ve lived that I could find myself at a Yeats exhibition in Dublin a few hours before a concert with the RTE National Symphony. And it was also a reminder for me of those times in my past that were so awful that I wouldn’t wish to relive them again. And, as per the old adage, pain passes as time passes – in fact, sometimes the passage of time is the only thing that could bring healing.

Holding both of these ideas at the same time, the ability to accept this duality and finding peace with a situation that can never be either/or – I’m still working on it. Meanwhile, if anyone can think of a way to speed up time on those interminable trans-Atlantic flights, let me know…