Plague Journal, Slouching Together..
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?
Dire circumstances. As of Thursday the New York Times reported 160,000 new corona virus cases in the country. The piecemeal efforts of states and cities appear ineffective so far to slow the virus. How long before the unimpeded spread, and the resulting serious illness of numbers of people cause our supply chains to buckle?
Some poems cause me to cry, I tear up as I read or hear the words read aloud. This is a poem that so moves me. W. B. Yeats composed this poem in 1919 during the flu pandemic. His pregnant wife had contracted the Spanish Flu. The death rates for pregnant women were at seventy percent, among the highest. These words were penned during her convalescence.
The Second Coming of Yeat’s poem is not the one expected of my childhood, when my parents and all the church-going folk anticipated the appearance of Jesus who would inaugurate a world order of sweet peace, love and harmony. Humanity in Yeat’s time and now is being pursued by a silent killer, that we narcissistic Americans are powerless to marshal collective discipline to resist. No national measures will be taken until a new president is sworn into office in January. We have failed so far to change our behavior as a people to reduce the numbers of serious illness and death. The virus spreads unchecked. Are we Americans not slouching along with it?
And what of music, a tune to allow life to be worth the living in these times? Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane will take care of us. The tears come whenever I happen to hear this one performed over the radio. The Cowboy Junkies made a cover of this that is quite good as well. The lyric is about many things. Listen closely and you will receive what is meant for you. The interview with Lou Reed that follows is a “must listen” too. I heard his comments about sound and music in particular as the voice of an angel, with a message from “god.”
To hear a brief interview with Lou Reed CLICK HERE.
Sweet Jane
By Lou Reed
Standing on the corner, suitcase in my hand
Jack is in his corset, Jane is in her vest
And me, I’m in a rock’n’roll band
Ridin’a stutz bearcat, Jim
You know, those were different times
Oh, all the poets, they studied rules of verse
And those ladies, they rolled their eyes
Sweet Jane, sweet Jane, sweet Jane
Jack, he is a banker
And Jane, she is a clerk
And both of them save their monies
when they come home from work
Ooh, they be sittin’ down by the fire
Oh, the radio does play
The classical music, said Jim, the ‘march of the wooden soldiers’
All you protest kids, you can hear Jack say, get ready
Sweet Jane, come on, baby
Sweet Jane, sweet Jane
Some people, they like to go out dancing
Other peoples, they have to work
Just watch me now
And there’s some evil mothers
Well they’re gonna tell you that everything is just dirt
You know, that women never really faint
And that villains always blink their eyes
And that, you know, children are the only ones who blush
And that life is just to die
But anyone who ever had a heart
Oh, they wouldn’t turn around and break it
And anyone who’s ever played a part
Oh, they wouldn’t turn around and hate it
Sweet Jane, sweet Jane, sweet Jane …
2 thoughts on “Plague Journal, Slouching Together..”
I rarely play the part of the optimist, which, of course is a prelude to my writing something that has at least the taste of optimism. Yeats’ poem was both a personal tome about his wife and a broader perspective on the world at large during a very dark time in our collective history. The flu (Spanish is the popular name, but a misnomer – kind of like the “Chinese” pandemic today) of 1916 was raging as was the battle of egos that killed millions of soldiers stuck in waterlogged trenches. Yet humanity survived. During the London blitz the Nazis rained fire upon the civilian population and the world appeared to be ending. It didn’t. The 1960s brought what was considered a new world order based on peace and love as the war in Vietnam crashed to an unceremonious halt leaving millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians dead. Now those countries are tourist destinations.
Life changes. Trump is slowly being excised from his position as the president, the corona virus will pass, and the world will return to some semblance of normalcy. This is how our species works. I will not go into the potential demise of humanity from climate change for that is a separate issue. But if we were not facing the existential extinction of our species from the destruction of our environment, we would be able to know that the yo-yo of our self-inflicted dysfunction is just entering another phase.
No disagreement here. Your “But if..” is the elephant in the room. The Trump presidency, and the pandemic are indirectly related to climate change. Our first world way of life with extractive economics is no longer sustainable. Trump and his party have mounted a last ditch effort to prop-up the old way of conducting our affairs no matter the cost to the earth, and to citizens and others of color.