Tuesday, September 23, 2008

So


The last post made me look all socialist-anarchist and poor and angry and such.

Pshaw.

Oh, and perhaps like an alcoholic, or at least someone who has rigid expectations about certain planned recreational moments.  I can't stand when little things are thwarted.

It's the kind of disposition that gets very lost upon learning, always at the last moment — don't think that I look up and then iCal-schedule the television programming guide in advance; who has time for that? — to discover that The Simpsons is delayed by football or that Futurama is cancelled.

(The latter I learned beforehand from a researching friend. I heard from another that King of the Hill is next. It's like my camping / float trip "curse;" it always rains.  Baseball games, too, though only almost always. And the last family reunion in 18 years or something.  But every show I really like doesn't last.  Greg the Bunny.  North Shore.  Arrested Development.  Note to you:  don't market to my demographic because its buying power is way weak and we can't keep anything that's not on cable afloat.  I kind-of wonder why Boston Legal is still on.  Of course, try to track the showing times of that program, and you will find they're random and require an RSS or Twitter feed to alert fans who care.  I know about the program downloads.  I can't watch TV on a computer and off the expected time.  Therein lies my loyalty.  It all makes sense now.)

Still, I like things, certain, inconsequential and utterly benign and non-addictive things to remain predictable.

"Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold?"

I think after 88 years and my many moments with it that there is no copyright on The Second Coming by Mr. Yeats anymore. No matter he was being specific, about a place and time, much like certain evangelists had to work with; the point is that it's still relevant, is "timeless" and has the power to move (plus it's in our own language, always an advantage when reading poetry):


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?

**********
addicted-to-AP and contemp. rules must say that oh, i would have to edit it to "toward." english, you are tedious.

1 comment:

hearmysong said...

so ironic that you posted the yeats. heroes used it as a voice-over and i said to m. "wow, i love this poem," and he said, "really? this one?" implying its darkness.

still, love the gyre, and the beast slouching toward bethlehem.

ah, english.