Things fall apart . . .

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?

William Butler Yeats

Some excellent commentary on Mr Yeat's poem here at Washington Rebel.

A small sample:

"The center cannot hold. So says Yeats…….and here we are turning and turning in the widening gyre.

Do you like it here America? In the widening gyre? Things do fall apart. The old order gives way to the new, cultures clash and societies are supplanted by what may come. What is coming? What slouches forth while we pass the time with breads and circus?"