KALI YUGA for Kathleen Raine Ten years ago I spent a rainy afternoon in Kathleen's Chelsea flat drinking tea and pondering the mysteries of Blake and Yeats, discussing time that spirals down in deepening cycles of degeneration, and the Hindu naming of this Age of Iron in which a Golden Age is only a lost idea: I wondered what the future would bring. "Angels," she said. Here in this quake-haunted seacoast city, my life as changed from then to now as Golden Age to Age of Iron, I ponder new mysteries: a life that runs from 9:00 to 5:00 and starts again the next day, a newer, faster spiral, going down and down and down again tomorrow, and I wonder what is the Hindu name for Age of Dust, and if there will be angels. MW June 1995
Margaret Williams studied Yeats at CSUN several years ago. This poem resulted from a visit she paid Kathleen Raine in Ireland in 1995. In a recent letter, Margaret added this tidbit: "Kathleen went to India and did the whole searching for truth thing like any other teenaged hippie...only she's 75 if she's a day, dear girl. What a kidder."
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