[owen] second coming

[Lawrence]

June --

The subject heading of the note from Mudville made me think of the Yeats poem, which 
works very nicely as a litmus test, or a Rorshach test.  A comment on the Yeats
poem reveals the person making the comment.  

Yeats wrote the poem in 1919, after European Christians had gone on a murdering
binge we call World War I.    In the eight lines of that first stanza Yeats provided 
titles for many a book, essay, poem.  It seems that his words said what lots of
readers accept as what they want to be said.  

In the second stanza Yeats evokes the movement in the desert that may signal
the Second Coming.    That shape out there in the desert, that lion/man,  that
thing from the spirit of the world, seems to be giving birth  --   to what?  A rough
beast.  No promise here of a birth that will bring joy to the world, tools made
from swords, neighbors loving neighbors.  After 2000 years of the nightmares
born of  those promises,  here comes something else.  

In Washington, DC yesterday, the throng and the speaker claimed that here 
comes something else.   I feel good about what's coming.

Cheers  --  
Lawrence

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