Poet's Choice

When we come at the end of time

To Peter sitting in state,

He will smile on the three old spirits,

But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,

Save by an evil chance,

And the merry love the fiddle,

And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,

They will all come up to me,

With "Here is the fiddler of Dooney!"

And dance like a wave of the sea.

In heaven, Yeats proposes, joy trumps everything. Did at least some of the commuters in that L'Enfant Plaza station sense and reject the seductive, amoral appeal of art? Would stopping to listen be too naughty, too irreverent a possibility to consider at all? Too defiant and dangerous, a siren song violating the temple of getting to work? It's a comfort to think so.

(W.B. Yeats's poem "The Fiddler of Dooney" is from "The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats." Macmillan. Copyright 1956 by Macmillan.)

Robert Pinsky's most recent book of poetry is "Jersey Rain."