At the Ocean's Edge

Hero as liberator. There is also

the warrior marked by Fate, who overmasters

every enemy in "the known world"

until the elements reveal themselves.

One found the final equal in his head

then turned the struggle outward, against the sea.

Yeats discovered him through Lady Gregory

but grew to know him well in his own right.

He saw him in the final crisis-sweating

mental strife-and used him more than once,

and found him helpful as a second shadow

in his own sour duel with the middle classes.

Aogän Ö Rathaille ended his career

at the ocean's edge, a beggarman converting

the gale wailing inland off the water

into a voice responding in his head,

cursing back at the waves on their own terms

-energy of chaos and a shaping

counter-energy in throes of balance;

solitary response, eliciting

order from the uproar of particulars,

struggling toward a posture of refusal

on the basis of some kind of understanding.

Man's beggar rags in tatters in the tempest.

What usefulness there is in the frayed figure

borne on the waves of threat inside the mind.

As who can not attest that turned his face

outward and waded out past the ninth shadow

into dead calm. Dame Kindness, her bowels torn.