I saw this bit of Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming quoted in the NYTimes comments about last night’s shooting in Charleston. As I read the early reports, even then it was being considered domestic terrorism, and moments later was being deemed a hate crime but it was all without detail of course. A man walks into a church and starts shooting.
These days it looks like ready-made news:
A man [insert location] and started shooting. [insert number killed] killed and [ insert number injured] injured. Those in crowd ask, ‘but why?’. After the suspect was found and taken into custody, his friends and family expressed shock, ‘we never guessed it would come to this’ and his family joined their sorrow to those who had lost loved ones in the shooting
Well, back to Yeats for a moment. Here’s the quoted first stanza:
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.
If you read further, it ends:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This week I’ve had a few encounters with fellow human beings that left me a bit breathless, concerned, angry, fearful and frankly not knowing what to do. More and more I feel that it’s in all of these small, day to day encounters with hatred and fear and ignorance that we must take a stand, we need to say ‘no, that’s not acceptable’ or it just becomes ok to keep acting that way and saying those things. If enough people say ‘no, that’s not acceptable’ change can begin.
Drawing the line now. No more. I know I’ll sadly have more instances to sorrow over lives lost to hatred and stupidity and fear. But I hope they’ll renew my commitment to look at the line I’ve drawn.
