Another attempt at a Yeats-inspired sonnet

[Achebe]

1453


And if the father of my flesh and image knew
that even in his old Teiresian age
he should beget a son, would he have moved
to this vast city gold and purple made
for tattered coats on sticks? Where all the young
suffer, removed from liberty and pride
according to virtue's banner, having to climb
the golden shower tree or trumpet vine
for a love deprived of the blood-red warmth of wine
and mixed with a crazy salad: a muse's dance
turned touchless, tasteless, by allegory.
Offer me no Cathleen ni Houlihan
nor lusty dancer of the Sheban court,
I'd rather die than live an immigrant!

I liked the Byzantium inversion of no country for young men, that was clever, but the rest was rather closed, especially after "vine". It's dense sans beauty. Nope.