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Thursday, November 06, 2008

A poem for our day

The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

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 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?

4 comments:

Buckaroo Banzai said...

Today a Savior is born. And his name is Barack Hussein Obama.

*gag*

Dick Stanley said...

Ouch. That cuts close to the bone.

miriam sawyer said...

Hosanna!

Anonymous said...

O, I started enjoying it. Intermission for 2 months, than the climax of imbecilic euphoria, than the excretion product starts to hit the ventilation device - and i'll be there to watch!

Really, we ex-Soviets, are in the best position: the history repeats itself as dumbed-down abridged schoolplay of a Great Tragedy and we not only know all the Acts beforehead - we are skilled at making ourselves comfortable amidst stage thunder and terrified audience!