No, Old Men – Things Fail to Fall Apart (and that's the trouble)

When we neglect our country,

monuments tatter.

The holy gyre is revealed

as turning by artifice.

Drowsy in our anarchy,

we fail to see, in the centre

of the incoming tide,

the waste it carries. We turn

even oceans to desert. Pitiless 
and without ceremony, how 

we debauch earth’s innocence.

In Get Listed! today, at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we are asked to use at least three words from two poems by Yeats (Sailing to Byzantium and The Second Coming) in a poem of our own. I used all the words, in the order given, and in keeping with Yeats's despairing view of the world in the poems cited. The words are: 

neglect
country
monuments
tatter
holy
gyre
artifice
drowsy

anarchy
centre (center)
tide
waste
desert
pitiless
ceremony
innocence

Oldest Friend

We met sitting next to each other

at Library School, before we had

husbands or children, or even jobs.

But it took us half a term

to begin talking to each other

instead of the girls on our other sides.

Once started, never entirely stopped.

Our sons were companions

in their earliest years, because we

their mothers liked being together.

We both made poems, always.

She came with me to bring

poetry workshops into prison.

She was my boss

at two different libraries

(when, by then, I'd ditched the career

and was working part-time).

She knows where all my bodies

are buried. As I do hers.

And the names of the secret lovers.

A couple of quarrels, soon over.

One large misunderstanding 

moved past rather than resolved.

(Each still feels right, but — shrug.)

Jokes, allusions, and a special nickname

no-one else is left alive 

to understand.

Written as a list poem for 'Friday Recipe' at 'imaginary garden with real toads' (each stanza an item on the list of our friendship's development). Also linked to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #253


Note (re the nickname, now that some readers have worked it out): The person who gave it to me is still very much alive. It was my friend's son, when much too young to be able to say 'Rosemary' with ease. But even he, a man now, possibly doesn't remember, and in any case would not have understood back then how and why others seized on it with delight. But my friend and I remember — as we remember those others who are no longer with us.