This is an #animation of the Irish #poet William Butler Yeats' haunting and visionary poem, The Second Coming. I feel that - like the falcon at the outset of this poem - I have been circling this poem for many years without ever touching it directly. That's because the #SecondComing is a landmark in literature, its lines spawning the titles of iconic books by writers like #chinuaachebe and Joan Didion. The phrase, 'the centre cannot hold' must be one of the most quoted lines in all poetry. So why is it so significant? For me, I think it's one of those works of art that creates a perfect marriage of the political and the personal. #Yeats was writing the poem in the aftermath of the horrors of WW1 and amid the uncertainty of Ireland's battle for independence. But he had also recently watched his wife nearly die from the influenza pandemic that was sweeping the world at the time. So the anxiety that suffuses the poem probably reflected a dread at what was happening in the world and what was happening in his own life. I don't need to state the parallels with today. But it's maybe worth reflecting on how the poem considers the idea of change. Yeats sensed change was coming, and while he seemed to fear that change (the image of the Spiritus Mundi is ominous to say the least) he is wise enough to remain ambivalent about what that change meant. It's clear that we also live in a time of great flux, and it's important to stay open to what that means. In destruction are the seeds of creation. In the dark of night you find the first intimations of the dawn.
For more information visit poetryinmotionanimation.com
The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
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?
