I'm thinking also of some of the events,
whether it's the Arab Spring or some
of the-- maybe the consequences of it,
and I thought of Yeats' gyre.
Gyre is this structure he imagined
as the way history evolved inwards, as sort of a spiral.
And once the gyre fulfilled, then another gyre begins.
It's a fantastic idea.
"On that unfashionable gyre again,
a farmer whose well runs dry, a woman
whose son they killed in jail and refused to hand her
the corpse, a magistrate in a small town
where the young men can find sex or wives or decent work,
is this how it starts?
Drought, unrequited grief, desire
that deserves sacrifice where truth and justice are only
a spark?
And before the self-immolated martyr's body cools off,
a fire has grown within tensions where new bodies volunteer
themselves as fuel for mind and power beyond their knowing,
or historical delusion is rekindled.
Now new shipping lines registered.
Access to markets and natural resources
guided by feasibility studies.
Estimates of low birth rates beyond the migrants' floods,
the burdens of the welfare state beyond even
outcome of persistent fears of the dilution of some pure race,
beyond them rises the sun riding up the seas.
The rivers touched with salt, a holy vision that bafflingly
came through, beyond mind and rescue
is the sense of impending grief and relief.
An image of us as the last survivors having eaten
and drunk everything, a sphere beyond repair
that is ours alone.
Oh master, is this how it begins or ends?"
The master is Yeats, of course.