Wednesday 3 January 2024

On reading Yeats



 If this waning gibbous moon has a bird's eye view

it must be perplexed as to why we build 

only to destroy, that we learn nothing

from his story or hers, that we take pleasure

in inflicting pain, that we lack 

the imagination to imagine 

what it must be like 

just a few lines of longitude away 

watching death strike from the sky, 

that from generation to generation

the same evil rises to the surface 

that Yeats' rough beast still slouches 

towards Bethlehem to be born.


What we know is that this moon instead of waxing into full

will soon slide like the cat's tail around the door post

at  dusk and into the darkness,and that the New Moon, 

for all its sound of promise, will be invisible ,at least for a time,

to the naked eye...


Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved.

In these current times I am reminded of Yeats' The Second Coming. See full text below.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)#

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