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.