25 September 2021 – An old poem, with new signifiance.

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.

— The Second Coming, first stanza, by W.B. Yeats, 1919

Reference texts note that Yeats wrote this poem in the immediate aftermath of a global war.

We may today instead note that he wrote it in the middle of a global pandemic.