Member-only story
Paper Poetry’s May 2025 prompt
The Sacrifices We Make
May they be in poetry and not in vain
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part
from Easter 1916 by William Butler Yeats
Greetings to our Paper Poetry friends,
The world is never silent; nor is it still. Much has happened these past few weeks that has demanded our attention, blurred the edges of joy and pain, gnawed incessantly at our fear, real or imagined. Out of that, one word, sacrifice, with all its positive and negative connotations, keeps popping up in the media, on the streets, and around the dinner table.
It happened again at a recent reading of W.B. Yeats’ poem, Easter 1916, where the themes of uncertainty and sacrifice were open for discussion. Yeats, in an effort to resolve his conflicting emotions, wrote the poem in the weeks immediately after the deadly Easter Monday uprising of Irish Republicans against the British establishment on April 24, 1916, when the world was already at war with itself.
Contrast that with this year’s Easter Monday (April 21) when early morning news from Vatican City informed the world of Pope Francis’ sudden passing.
