Michael Malone - Weebly

suddenly up into his eyes. Jonathan wanted to blink
away the hurt exposed there, and the shame at being
exposed, but he kept his eyes unblinking on the other
man's. "So, Jonathan, you see, it doesn't do anyone any
good to be a poet."
Silence moved with sunlight across the room. A
curtain billowed, then flattened against the windowpane.
"But Yeats isn't nothing, isn't dust."
"Up in heaven with the swans, I suppose?" The
headmaster shook out another cigarette.
"That's not what I meant. I don't know if heaven's
'up.' I meant, he's in here, in this room. You brought
him." (Please, Jonathan prayed, let me be some little
help this once, of all times, this time, please.) "Isn't that
who Yeats was, really? What you keep alive?"
"What good does that do Yeats?"
"The good it does you."
Saar put the glass down on the floor and hugged it
between his shoes.
"I probably won't remember this right," Jonathan
said. "'An aged man is like a tattered coat upon a stick
unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for