Saturday, April 28

Timely

I know I'm not the first one to think of the timeliness of this poem by Yeats, but I've always loved this poem. Religious sub-text aside, the imagery is so great! "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold", "The falcon cannot hear the falconer", "What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem", etc. with all the crap going on in the world right now, it seems particularly apt.

THE SECOND COMING

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Rich -
bet you don't remember who this is! Hmm you gave me a ride in the trunk of your 280Z for me to go get my driver's license... ring a bell? (Sort of like you rang that bell during our Monthy Python sketch - Bring out Your Dead).
Need more hints?
Shoot me an email... 7tiger7@gmail.com

RP said...

Would this be the same person who sent me out to buy the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica CDs for him? And who, after successfully getting his driver's license, bought an RX-7?