[A poem for our times---unfortunately]
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.
 |
| William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939 |
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?
*Widening gyre: cycles or circular motions; Yeats was referring to his belief in cycles of history. He felt that an orderly one that came with the birth of Christ was about to give way to chaos. [This writer, looking at history, would not agree it had been all that orderly since Christ's birth.] The times just after First World War, with the concurrent 'flu pandemic, brought a lot of "apocalyptic" thinking about. The devastation of those two events was enormous.
**"The center cannot hold" is taken by some political scientists or laymen to suggest that a third, centrist party cannot take off in places like the United States. The touchstone for the metaphor may actually be military: The center of a battle line being broken through. It may also be Yeats' sense that society's ties to religion or other traditional cultures or worldviews are being torn apart. In this sense, it would be things that "center people" rather than a Centrist view.
However, in our current tribalistic political times, it's sad thing that a Center once created by compromise cannot be heard. It's not totally gone (though it seems more and more people are taking sides, and the rude voices try to drown the Center from both sides), but it doesn't have voice in our current society. Note, also, Yeats saying the worse are "full of passionate intensity."
(I would argue that our "First past the post" election system, the winner takes all idea, is a big part of the problem. With ranked choice voting, more people risk voting for others in multi-party systems, not feeling they're going to "throw the vote" to the candidate they really DON'T like. They put that person 2nd, and if their preferred candidate is taken out of competition, their #2 vote still counts for something. And it can go beyond #2, as far down as ranking is deemed feasible.)
***Spiritus Mundi: spirit of the world; the collective spirit of humankind. According to Yeats, it is a mystical concept, ''a universal memory and a 'muse' of sorts that provides inspiration to the poet or write."
****Apparently the AntiChrist, trying to mock and mimic Christ with its birth in a figurative Bethlehem. Interesting, how is it slouching before birth? Is this an accidental oversight? Or is this a description of something so horrific it forces whatever its maternal creation is to slouch off in an evil journey before birth that mocks the holy one of Mary (pregnant with Jesus) and Joseph? [Thoughts of Voldemort in Harry Potter, before he gets his body back. come to mind. Also, a shadowy Tash overtaking Narnia in the last of the Chronicles of Narnia.]
