climbing back up again
May. 26th, 2012 01:06 amCold has gone down a couple of notches, and I was a bit more functional at work today, though still making loud noises at irregular intervals. (And it did give me an excuse to avoid a big optional briefing/position statement after lunch this afternoon, as I pointed out that it would probably not be a good idea for me to be in close quarters in a meeting room with a lot of other people. So no cloud, silver lining, etc.)
I also had the pleasant surprise of another shirting-cotton fabric donation from the friend of a friend who works in a nearby men's tailoring firm. So that was a very nice way to end the day. It was partly a set of those cloth samples you get, where they're pieces of a foot or so of fabric, clipped to a cardboard header giving the name/type/details of the fabric, which you may have seen in fabric or upholstery stores, but all shirting-cotton weight. I can make excellent use of these.
---
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?
-- WB Yeats
I also had the pleasant surprise of another shirting-cotton fabric donation from the friend of a friend who works in a nearby men's tailoring firm. So that was a very nice way to end the day. It was partly a set of those cloth samples you get, where they're pieces of a foot or so of fabric, clipped to a cardboard header giving the name/type/details of the fabric, which you may have seen in fabric or upholstery stores, but all shirting-cotton weight. I can make excellent use of these.
---
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?
-- WB Yeats
no subject
Date: 2012-05-26 12:20 am (UTC)And WB Yeats is my favorite poet, bar none, and that is my favorite poem of his! I've been thinking of it a lot lately, when I get all gloomy and apocalyptic-feeling, when looking at what seems to be going on in politics these days.... O___o (But then Yeats felt the same way nearly 100 years ago when he wrote the poem, so maybe there's hope for us yet....)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-26 12:41 am (UTC)It is a very resonant poem, isn't it?