I admit it. I like reading poetry. (Occassionally, you will find ink running from the corners of my mouth -- that's when I've been damn busy eating poetry). In Symbolist sense, I could not resist drawing connections to the U.S.'s current Middle East situation and the one depicted in Yeats' The Second Coming. While I normally shy away from voicing my political views in public (aren't they obvious?), I couldn't resist drawing connections.              

    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: a waste of desert sand;
    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
    Wind 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 (1865-1939)

Past || Present parallels

Without stretching allusions too far, Yeats draws a picture of the best of times, and the worst of times, all centering on the moment at hand.

So what is our job? What are we the reader to do? Are we inspired to go along with a fighting spirit? How should we choose to face the anarchy and passions that surround us?

What if our passions are misguided?

Perhaps there is a plan in Yeats' work. A plan that sits beneath the surface awaiting its turn. Perhaps the plan is located somewhere in the Spiritus Mundi, our universal consciousness, somewhere before the mind's eye, passing from generation to generation. Similarly, the U.S. may have a plan to resolve tensions in the Middle East, but they are not apparent, "the falcon cannot hear the falconer."

My favorite lines that I believe best captures the current executive branch's throes:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

What happens when our passions are misguided -- when things fall apart?

Surely some revelation is at hand. Could that revelation/revolution be tied to the many pieces loosely joining across the Web? Religious connotations aside, the "Second Coming," the next historical cycle that is upon us, is built upon more than a set of tools. Perhaps this shift is more representative of a "coming together," of people joining together, sharing, and conversing across time and space.

While I have only given Yeats' work a brief, post-positivist rub, his poem leaves much to consider. As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Reference:
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first World War.
It can be found in: Yeats, William Butler. Michael Robartes and the Dancer. Chruchtown, Dundrum, Ireland: The Chuala Press, 1920. (as found in the photo-lithography edition printed Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1970.)
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