Brad Buchanan
W.B. Yeats In Front Of The Wireless
An old man talking back to the sounds
on the radio, mocked by his children and friends
but undaunted, pursues the living dream
of an absolute yet responsive voice –
a channel we can change by assuming
its noises are ours, its powers our place.
The bulky barometer of the mind
sits high up on the mantelpiece
like a portrait of a relative
whom we love despite his craggy face –
its readings blur if we deign to scream;
it is almost a microphone
but isn’t.
The ones who make their names
by marshalling hard-won eloquence
cannot resist the impulse to join
the modern, one-sided conversations
and soon become ridiculous.
It is old-fashioned innocence
to trust a broadcast enough to waste
one’s measured and yet passionate breath
defending a private version of truth.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The