It’s not Friday but here’s a poem anyway. Maybe it’s Friday somewhere in another world.

NO SECOND TROY

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

– W.B. Yeats

I gravitate between wanting to write small perfect poems, like this, and long messy ones. The things I have written lately have been of a more in-between length. But I have always loved poems that are compact and intense. Like Epitaph on a Tyrant or Western Wind or so much of Larkin or Cope.