Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's January 28th, 2020, which as I've mentioned a few times, means that it is the anniversary

of the death of William Butler Yates, one of the preeminent poets of the 20th century and of the

English language. He was an Irish poet, of course. And the poem that I'm going to read today

on this anniversary is called Adam's Curse. It's one of his more famous, more popular poems. And it goes

like this. We sat together at one summer's end, that beautiful mild woman, your close friend, and you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, a line will take us hours maybe, yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching

and unstitching has been knots. Better go down upon your marrow bones and scrub a kitchen

pavement or break stones like an old

pauper in all kinds of weather.

For to articulate sweet sounds together is to work harder than all these, and yet be thought

an idler by the noisy set of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen, the martyrs call

the world.

And thereupon, that beautiful, mild woman, for whose sake there

is many a one shall find out all heartache, on finding that her voice is sweet and low, replied,

To be born woman is to know, although they do not talk of it at school, that we must labor

to be beautiful. I said, it's certain there is no fine thing since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be so much compounded of high courtesy

that they would sigh and quote with learned looks precedence out of beautiful old books.

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.

We sat grown quiet in the name of love. We saw the last embers of daylight die,

and in the trembling blue-green of the sky, a moon, worn as if it had been a shell,

...