The troubles with poetry (dark pun intended) (PW)

 So today has been a hot mess. Everything was well until I began researching Tibetan architecture for my Art History Presentation. I was online looking at pictures of this beautiful temple when I found out the temple had been destroyed and burned to the ground by the Chinese government. In the past 50 years it is estimated that the Chinese Government has murdered atleast1 million Tibetans. It was all a number until I saw the pictures of destruction and demolition online. Peoples houses, as well as my beautiful Buddhist temple have been burnt to the ground. I was really upset (I guess I still am because I'm writing this post). Anyways for my poetry write I chose to look up more destruction. In this post I'm combining my love of the Troubles history and Ireland with my love of poetry. 
 
Here are two poems. Casualty was written in 1979 about the Troubles (ongoing conflict between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Easter, 1916 refers to the Easter Rising in 1916 when a thousand Irish Republicans died trying to get Ireland to secede from Britain.
Casualty
By Seamus Heaney
He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
And blackcurrant, without
Having to raise his voice,
Or order a quick stout
By a lifting of the eyes
And a discreet dumb-show
Of pulling off the top;
At closing time would go
In waders and peaked cap
Into the showery dark,
A dole-kept breadwinner
But a natural for work.
I loved his whole manner,
Sure-footed but too sly,
His deadpan sidling tact,
His fisherman's quick eye
And turned observant back.

Incomprehensible
To him, my other life.
Sometimes on the high stool,
Too busy with his knife
At a tobacco plug
And not meeting my eye,
In the pause after a slug
He mentioned poetry.
We would be on our own
And, always politic
And shy of condescension,
I would manage by some trick
To switch the talk to eels
Or lore of the horse and cart
Or the Provisionals.

But my tentative art
His turned back watches too:
He was blown to bits
Out drinking in a curfew
Others obeyed, three nights
After they shot dead
The thirteen men in Derry.
PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,
BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday
Everyone held
His breath and trembled. 

Easter, 1916

By William Butler Yeats

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent   

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers   

When, young and beautiful,   

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school   

And rode our wingèd horse;   

This other his helper and friend   

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,   

So sensitive his nature seemed,   

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,   

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,   

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone   

Through summer and winter seem   

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,   

The rider, the birds that range   

From cloud to tumbling cloud,   

Minute by minute they change;   

A shadow of cloud on the stream   

Changes minute by minute;   

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,   

And a horse plashes within it;   

The long-legged moor-hens dive,   

And hens to moor-cocks call;   

Minute by minute they live:   

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.   

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part   

To murmur name upon name,   

As a mother names her child   

When sleep at last has come   

On limbs that had run wild.   

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;   

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith   

For all that is done and said.   

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;   

And what if excess of love   

Bewildered them till they died?   

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

Some much-needed analysis:
The two poems are both hauntingly beautiful. They also are set in Ireland, written by Irish-born poets and deal with death. They differ in that Casualty focuses on a commoner with no connection to the conflict going on around him. He is never given a name because he is meant to represent every unaffiliated bystander who has been or will be harmed by the Troubles. The man's only fault was that he disobeyed curfew to have another pint at a pub.
Easter, 1916 is more specific. For one, it focuses on a specific event while the casualties of the troubles were ongoing for a good forty years. It also focuses on specific leaders. Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, Connoly and the others mentioned were all leaders in the rebellion who were executed by the British.
Both poems provide social commentary in different ways. Both poems have the ability to make me cry. I wish I could provide better analysis than this but it is 12:50 pm on a Wednesday and I'm so done.
Here are some pretty pictures of Northern Ireland