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?
The world had its trying moments in 1921 when William Butler Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” but it had not quite been 2000 years since the last “Coming.” Maybe he was observing the first stages of the beast’s pregnancy and the torment upon its mother. Almost nine decades later, it appears the birth of the “rough beast” is upon us. However, when in these past 2000 years have we seen the peace that the last Avatar should have awoken in us? Perhaps what we witness now is not a birth of darkness but the pains of this evil as it finds itself upon a deathbed. Never before in this world’s history have there been events like the worldwide Peace Marches of February and March. There were tens of millions of people in the streets who, although they saw the need to restrain forces of evil, confronted its strength with compassion. What force is unleashed upon the world that fills the best with passionate conviction? What force will restrain the worst in their passionate intensity?
The worst have no restraint. Their carefully crafted propaganda has convinced the people that precision guided munitions will alleviate opposition. Now that we think precision is the strategy, the smart bombs go back on the shelf and the “Beast” will return to its tried and true methods of mass destruction. Yes, carpet bombing, indiscriminate death, and massive collateral damage are soon to be upon the enemies of the “Beast.” The guilt of silent complicity hardens the hearts that await the turning of the wheel. Compassion and equity wait to fill those hearts as soon as they awake from their “stony sleep.”
America
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
One year later Claude McKay wrote “America.” Although McKay was a black poet describing how the culture of America affected him and others of his race at that time, it appears to me that his description of America then applies today to our country in general. “She feeds me bread of bitterness” by cutting funding for education, childcare, and lying to me saying “no child left behind.” She steals my “breath of life” as pollution control laws are gutted. “This cultured hell” seethes with a dramatically polarized population demanding conversation yet restrained through fear of suppression of dissent. “Her vigor flows like tides” between the diametrically opposed wings that coexist in our country’s blood. Her support of death-dealing regimes around the world challenges our strength to hold ourselves erect within our complicity. The bigness of her crimes “sweeps my being” and my guilt, “like a flood,” again gives me strength that I may stand before King George as a rebel, and with “not a tear of terror, malice, not a word of jeer” gaze darkly at the days ahead. I see her wonders sinking, no treasure left, under the sands of a desert half a world away.
Men at Forty
Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to. At rest on a stair landing, They feel it Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship, Though the swell is gentle. And deep in mirrors They rediscover The face of the boy as he practices tying His father's tie there in secret And the face of that father, Still warm with the mystery of lather. They are more fathers than sons themselves now. Something is filling them, something That is like the twilight sound Of the crickets, immense, Filling the woods at the foot of the slope Behind their mortgaged houses.
When he was forty-three Donald Justice wrote “Men at Forty.” I’m almost thirty-nine so I reckon I better get a good look at this one. Looks like a good hint for me there in the first stanza, there are rooms that I “will not be coming back to.” Is there some part of youth that I have not yet lost that I will lose in the next eighteen months? Apparently, as I rest on a stair landing, I will feel the swell of time. I will look in mirrors seeing the boy that I was and will not be then. As I fill with the twilight sound of crickets chattering my mortality, I will dispense with Justice (Donald) and run naked through a field of flowers. Or maybe strap on a sign that says, “Coast to Coast and Back for Peace” and set out on an ascetic pilgrimage wearing out shoes as I walk the highways chanting and singing my prayers to the universe. When I look ahead to forty I see youth in my heart. At fifty, youth. At sixty, youth. On my deathbed with great-grandchildren beside me and scritching my beard in hopes of rousing that love filled smile they will have become fond of, I see youth. “Men at Forty” is not me at forty. Good try though Donald.
When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;–then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
John Keats wrote “When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be” three years before he died at the young age of twenty six. At almost forty, I find many of his concerns reflected within my own fears. My brain teems with what my pen has not gleaned. Thick tomes of experience not yet shared hold my ripening grain. The way things are going in the world I wonder if I will ever have the chance. However, I’m an optimist and when I trace the shadows of “cloudy symbols” it comes out in a giant peace sign that the “magic hand of chance” applies by having the right person available to help the ones who are in need. Sometimes I also feel like I stand alone on the shores of the world but I have what Keats did not, media access and as a result I know that the spirit of compassion is alive in the world. I know that the “fair creature of an hour” that I look upon will also find hope and together love and fame will not sink into nothingness but rise and share with everyone.
A Little Learning
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts;
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
The eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way;
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
Alexander Pope wrote “A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing.” Just when I thought I knew it all this poem comes along and reveals to me that I’ve only had a shallow draft from the spring of the muses. With my brain drunk and fired I’ve jumped in again and again. Taking on projects, volunteering, and sacrificing the little bit of spare time that I didn’t really have. Just as Pope described, all I saw was a general untidiness and quick to use my limited knowledge and skills, I’ve grabbed the hand broom and a dustpan only to see that what I thought was a little mess is in reality range after range of confusion, want, and need. It tires more than my wandering eyes, it discourages me but once atop the towering range trembling with awe at what I survey, I find no reason to turn around and climb back down. I know that as I traverse the illimitable ranges I will gain the knowledge necessary to embark on the steady climb that will carry me up and eventually over to the paradise that resides in my mind.