THE SECOND COMING

THE SECOND COMING 
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?

Yeats write this poem in 1919 just after the First World War and about the time of the Irish War of Independence and the 1918/1919 Influenza pandemic.

Before Robert gets too excited, the Christian references to The Apocalypse and The Second Coming are allegorical and have connection to the atmosphere of the post-war world not some old book cobbled together over centuries.

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This is a powerful poem as most of Yeats' work is and has been one of my favourites since university days. I like W.B.Yeats poetry as does The Old Girl. We  spent some time at the Yeats museum in Dublin a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The poem came to mind today when I was catching up on news of what Putin and Russia is up to. Not good. The latest mobilisation of up to a million citizens is like :

 

"A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds."

I wrote a previous post about the move to the right in world politics and the looming threat of another form of Fascism.

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;

A decline in values and respect for important social and political institutions is driving lawlessness and violence worldwide. We are seeing this in New Zealand with the growth of 'youth crime' at levels never seen before. There's a general public apathy about this where normal and reasonable people aren't motivated to act, but the radical and dangerous people are being inspired to take advantage. See what's happening in USA with unprecedented right wing violence and in UK, France and Scandinavia with the growth of White Power movements.

Yeats' pessimism in 1919 that humanity was doomed and that all progress to date was being rubbished has quite a resonance today and if he was alive no doubt he'd still believe that we've lost our way or never knew it to begin with.  The twentieth (and now twenty first century) promises of safety, security, and human dignity proved to be empty then and are empty now.  

In this poem the second coming isn't Jesus or any other variants of Robert's god(s) that Christianity has promised but instead is a - "rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" - which is mankind's basic nature of greed, corruption and violence that has and will lead to wars.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news.