Poetry Day - A way of happening

I have been enjoying reading my way, in haphazard fashion, through Auden's poetry. The problem with many of his poems, when it comes to blogging, is that they're quite long, and blog police are always telling me posts mustn't be that long. I think Auden would get away with it myself, but today here is a little piece off the end of a poem written for W.B. Yeats. It's a nice little comment on poetry itself.

In Memory of W. B. Yeats

...

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:

The parish of rich women, physical decay,

Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth.

W.H. Auden