The Second Coming
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?
— William Butler Yeats (1920)
2 comments:
Yeats, an atheist?
Hmm. Dunno if he was an atheist or not. (Yes, I could look it up.) I do know that much of the imagery of this poem calls to mind Bush's crusade against the Middle East and many other things beside.
Why do small-time non-players in the global arena like Iraq and Afghanistan get the full brunt of our "attention," while active, armed, and obvious threats like Putin's Russia, North Korea, and Iran (not to mention the Israel/Palestine perpetual powder keg) get pushed to the side and promised to be settled with diplomacy, and then never are?
What about the Georgian families who've had their lives shattered? What about the millions of North Koreans who live as virtual slaves to a delusional God-Dictator? What about an intrusive culture in Israel who because of Old Testament nonsense founded a nation in 1947 with UN backing which disenfranchised many people who already lived in the area they were granted right to? What about China's human rights abuses and yet giving them the Olympics? What about Darfur - it hasn't gone away, you know. People are skeletal and oppressed and suffering horribly, mired in sand and wire refugee camps where hope isn't allowed. What about Myanmar where a brutal military regime rules with an iron fist? Or the same situation with that maniac Chavez in Venezuela who has children killing children? What about massive corruption in Mexico? In the USA?
Where are the people to cry and carry the banners for the lost and disenfranchised peoples all over this planet, to whom life is not a dream full of opportunities, but merely a hell to be endured till a delusional Salvation comes their way, their only means of coping?
If I believed in the Bible and End Times, which I DON'T, I would find Yeats' words eerily prescient of the world in which we find ourselves living. Even without that 'magical' link, it's a sound and modern sound observation of the world of haves and have-nots, and indeed perhaps the Great Sphinx of Giza IS slowly stretching his limbs for a coming catastrophe.
Sometimes atheists pray for a better world too, but instead of Providence they turn to Action.
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