A Terrible Beauty Is Born

  I was lucky enough to attend the March For Our Lives Rally in Washington D.C. Lucky though, while accurate, doesn't even begin to describe it. I realize, now, that I am thrilled and honored and humbled by what I saw and heard. It's taken until now to be able to put it into words.
  The seventeen speakers were kids. Everyone of them touched by death. The survivors of the Parkland, Florida shootings organized the rally only a bit more than a month after the massacre. And to hear speaker after speaker talk about losing siblings, friends and teachers to guns brought tears to the millions of us listening. Beyond the emotion was strength and determination and courage almost beyond my belief. These young people, who, through no fault of their own, have seen the worst of human behavior, have decided to fix things. They are not alone. Pennsylvania Avenue was full of people, and there were rallies around the country and the world supporting action against gun violence. They are part of a movement that is part of a greater movement of progressive ideals that is not going anywhere but forward.
   On March 24, 2018, I saw the future. It is good.

Note: I titled this post after words the poet William Butler Yeats uses in 'Easter 1916'. That poem can be found on this blog with only a bit of clicking, if you want to understand the reference. 

On the Inauguration of Donald Trump

             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 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?
  William Butler Yeats

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed.
So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart.
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse-
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connally and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly;
A terrible beauty is born.
  William Butler Yeats

I have to thank Chris Matthews of MSNBC for reminding me of this, the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising, which began Ireland's last climb to freedom. Matthews also quoted pieces of this poem, which is a favorite of mine. The history of Ireland is a history of oppression and repression and constant battle for liberty. Americans feel kinship with the Irish because of that.

Note: Although Easter Monday should always be celebrated for the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Easter, itself falls on different dates each year. Today, April, 24th. is the actual hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising.

The Rose Tree

'O words are lightly spoken,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
'Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea.'

'It needs to be but watered,'
James Connolly replied,
'To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride.'

'But where can we draw water,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
'When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
can make a right Rose Tree.'
  William Butler Yeats

This poem is dedicated to Ireland, and every nation that has conquered tyranny, or will.

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 gray,
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.

William Butler Yeats

For F.

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.


And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.


I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.


William Butler Yeats

The Song of Wandering Aengus

 

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread:
And when white moths were on the wing;
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and tides are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.



William Butler Yeats

...I will find out where she has gone...