Slouching towards Bethlehem the left turn
Brought us face-to-face with a Trumpian
wall;
Right turn worse, customs officials, what
gall!
Talking to a sphinx is lots to unlearn.
The latest online Spiritus Mundi
Lead piece argues those with no
conviction
And those with intensity of passion
Meet their Maker regardless, maybe next
Monday.
Then reception gave out, whether wifi
Or recharging, the centre could not hold.
Oh what was my password again? sKyPIe.
Okay, Bethlehem scratched. Where next to
go.
Emmaus, where’s that when it’s home? Not
told.
Or there’s the old road going down to
Jericho.
Some readers may object to this reading
of ‘The Second Coming’, a veritable fruitcake of famous lines. However I have
always had reservations about what Yeats is really on about in this poem,
especially his peculiar use of certain typologies in the New Testament. Agreed,
the poem describes the foreboding felt in Europe at the end of the war in 1919,
and the words are intended ultimately as a sign of hope, but what’s he talking
about? I enjoy hearing individual lines, but one response to the poem as a
whole is this sonnet.
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