Second Coming

From William Butler Yeats, 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?

Let’s slouch with Lush, Anna Burch, Elastica, Echobelly, Big Star, Gorillaz, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, the DiVinyls, Alison Moyet, Lower Dens, the Auteurs, Gordon Lightfoot, Steeleye Span, and Lindisfarne.

This podcast is, as always, available to stream or download at brennick.net. There should be more content there, and I will try to put more things up this year. The podcast is also available to download as a podcast at your favorite podcast streamer – iTunes, Stitcher, etc. The podcast is called brennick.net. Check that out sometime. I welcome suggestions and comments, too – leave them as you will. Thanks for everything you do to encourage me.


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