The Fisherman

Question 1

Although

First Four Verses?

Answer 1

Although I can see him still—
The freckled man who goes
To a gray place on a hill
In gray Connemara clothes

Question 2

long since

At dawn…

Answer 2

At dawn to cast his flies—
It’s long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.

Question 3

own race

All day…

Answer 3

All day I’d looked in the face
What I had hoped it would be
To write for my own race
And the reality:

Question 4

craven

The living…

Answer 4

The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved—

Question 5

drunken

And no knave…

Answer 5

And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer—
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,

Question 6

Clown // art

The clever…

Answer 6

The clever man who cries
The catch cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

Question 7

Suddenly

Maybe a twelve-month…

Answer 7

Maybe a twelve-month since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,

Question 8

stone

And his sun-freckled…

Answer 8

And his sun-freckled face
And gray Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark with froth,

Question 9

exist

And the down turn of his wrist

Answer 9

And the down turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream—
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;

Question 10

Before

Final Four Verses…

Answer 10

And cried, “Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.”