W.B. Yeats' "The Second Coming" has resonated with me as a grim vision of this new century while it twitches in the stranglehold of Bush and his cronies.
To those of us who suffer through the lunatic sermons of the wingnuts, the most striking verse has to be this:
"The best lack all convictions, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity."
So here's a little challenge, a psychological boost of sorts, a prophecy of great things to come, or maybe just a chance to get creative: rewrite the poem in a positive tone. Take out the apocalyptic and replace it with the utopian.
A little sample:
"And what dumb beast, his final hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Crawford to be slain?"
Read more for original version.
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 convictions, 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?