The Second Coming (Cavatina Sequence)
(after William Butler Yeats)
Anarchy, mere madness is loose,
a president
for life is enthroned (while voted out) ,
an incident
of total corruption occurs daily,
not diffident
a country is laid waist, in merriment
brought to an utter impoverishment.
His fifth brigade cleans Matabeleland;
killing, raping;
farmers are driven from their property
just escaping
with their bare lives from some murderous crowds,
with mouth gaping
he smiles on the conquest of fertile farmland,
causing famine, in victory holds up a hand.
While havoc reigns some blood flows everywhere,
chaos is spreading,
the opposition is sent to prison,
he is leading
the country to ruin, its falling apart,
its degrading,
it looses all kinds of decent order,
some millions flee south and cross the border.
Without any conviction destruction
is on the earth,
while people want to rob, rape, pillage and kill;
are told from birth
that they have been robbed from a future,
anger they girth;
pray to their ancestor spirits for war,
surely God will now be coming once more!
[Reference: 'The Second Coming' by William Butler Yeats.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Related quotes
Turmoil is coming from far off (a reply to William Butler Yeats)
The Spiritus Mundi is hell bent
to take with force and not to earn
and blood letting is loosened everywhere:
A soapstone bird that is
coming alive troubles me
while it soars into the sky
turning around and around
forming a tornado
funnelling down to the ground
the centre grows strong
gaining power
sucking everything in
bringing devastation and mere anarchy
causing things to fall apart
ripping to pieces
shattering everything
with the dark funnel dropping again.
The country is in chaos
and destruction is close at hand
while the roots of trouble are rushing in
from all over Africa
and criminals walk the land.
Surely some divine intervention
is now close at hand
occurring just before the Second Coming
while men lack conviction
and turmoil is coming from far off,
but the beast is awake
taking in possession just what it wants
stealing, murdering and raping
and nightmare follows where it goes
leaving destruction, poverty, famine,
starvation, war and utter confusion
as if man is going back in time
to the iron age.
[References: Spiritus Mundi = The general spirit prevailing. The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Things fall apart the center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
quote by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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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 i{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?
poem by William Butler Yeats
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To be Carved On A Stone At Thoor Ballylee
I, THE poet William Yeats,
With old mill boards and sea-green slates,
And smithy work from the Gort forge,
Restored this tower for my wife George;
And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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To be Carved on a Stone at Ballylee
I, the poet William Yeats,
With old mill boards and sea-green slates,
And smithy work from the Gort forge,
Restored this tower for my wife George;
And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Harare
The midsummer sun hangs flaming
over the capitol city
which is painted white,
(the same colour as the graves)
in a country
stripped from the white man’s might,
stripped from providing
and exporting food, minerals
and products
where the value of the currency
changes faster than the billion dollar number
printed on the worthless bills.
Just here and there a car moves
as the country is without fuel
and even the traffic lights
are not working
(and neither are most people)
as the electricity is down.
.
The rural farms stand stripped bare
with primitive peasants
living there in utter poverty
and the fertile soil is vacant
as everything has being taken
by the people
(by force from farmers)
and now nobody has anything
and nothing has being planted
on a commercial scale
and famine is getting
to chaotic lengths
and the people
have returned to the land
to find a resting place there.
Children play under flowering jacaranda trees
in a light hot breeze
with stomachs swollen from hunger
and slime running from noses
and flies wandering over their faces
and some men urinate
against the nearest tree.
The street is filled with fear,
poverty, hunger, pestilence and death
and soldiers stand around idle
smoking cigarettes
longing back to the days
when they went as the fifth brigade
to the south west regions
and killed Ndebele people
plundering their villages,
raping their woman
and slaughtering the children.
Still there’s no sound
of real opposition, as apposing politicians
are arrested and beaten
time after time
by the police
and an out voted president,
a man proclaiming to be a Jesuit,
remains in the ruling chair
and the secret police is everywhere
and he holds out a begging hand
to neighbouring countries
for fuel, electricity, food and medicine
and whatever he wants
and it’s quite easy to head south
even if you have to crawl,
walk, take a bicycle,
a car, a bus or a train
to a neighbouring country
where the colour of your skin
counts much more
than a place of birth.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcone cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...
quote by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
quote by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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South Africa Is Also My Country
From my birth South Africa is my own country
and my people can flee to an island
but my own culture and language stays holy
although this place is not safe,
I still trust on a much higher hand,
from my birth South Africa is my own country.
From my birth South Africa is my own country
even if the struggling government gives me resistance,
do oppress me with unfair laws,
even if nothing can stop the disintegration,
even if I am not safe against the onslaught,
from my birth South Africa is my own country.
From my birth South Africa is my own country,
even if some act with effrontery against my people
I come from a noble heritage,
I am proud on my Afrikaner lineage,
even if people and buildings are set alight,
from my birth South Africa is my own country.
From my birth South Africa is my own country
with no other place I have such a deep bond
and even if here I will never have any job,
I believe in God and a Christian church,
God himself still keeps my ways intact,
from my birth South Africa is my own country.
poem by Gert Strydom
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An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
poem by William Butler Yeats from The Wild Swans at Coole (1918)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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A Woman homer Sung
IF any man drew near
When I was young,
I thought, 'He holds her dear,'
And shook with hate and fear.
But O! 'twas bitter wrong
If he could pass her by
With an indifferent eye.
Whereon I wrote and wrought,
And now, being grey,
I dream that I have brought
To such a pitch my thought
That coming time can say,
'He shadowed in a glass
What thing her body was.'
For she had fiery blood
When I was young,
And trod so sweetly proud
As 'twere upon a cloud,
A woman Homer sung,
That life and letters seem
But an heroic dream.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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No second Troy
How could I reproach her
that she brings destruction to me,
turns my whole life upside down
and aimless hate rather than love
radiates from her.
How was she able
to estrange me from work
and the people in the street
with slander,
that goes over whole continents,
with robbery, lies and curses
that rain down purposelessly.
Where could she find peace
with a spirit that devours
every thing around her
like a fire from hell,
while she thinks that she’s honourable
and her beauty greater
than that of the girls of today,
was enough to drive any man
to madness.
No second Troy would she burn,
no, the whole world would be aflame
if she could reach her hands to it.
[Reference: No second Troy by William Butler Yeats.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The Fish
ALTHOUGH you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords,
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.
quote by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Under Saturn
DO not because this day I have grown saturnine
Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought
Because I have no other youth, can make me pine;
For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought,
The comfort that you made? Although my wits have gone
On a fantastic ride, my horse's flanks are spurred
By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen,
And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard,
And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died
Before my time, seem like a vivid memory.
You heard that labouring man who had served my people. He said
Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay --
No, no, not said, but cried it out -- 'You have come again,
And surely after twenty years it was time to come.'
I am thinking of a child's vow sworn in vain
Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Drinking Song
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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A Drinking Song
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
poem by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
quote by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Quarrel In Old Age
WHERE had her sweetness gone?
What fanatics invent
In this blind bitter town,
Fantasy or incident
Not worth thinking of,
put her in a rage.
I had forgiven enough
That had forgiven old age.
All lives that has lived;
So much is certain;
Old sages were not deceived:
Somewhere beyond the curtain
Of distorting days
Lives that lonely thing
That shone before these eyes
Targeted, trod like Spring.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Three Movements
SHAKESPEAREAN fish swam the sea, far away from land;
Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand;
What are all those fish that lie gasping on the strand?
poem by William Butler Yeats
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