WEBVTT

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I'm thinking also of
some of the events,

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whether it's the
Arab Spring or some

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of the-- maybe the
consequences of it,

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and I thought of Yeats' gyre.

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Gyre is this
structure he imagined

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as the way history evolved
inwards, as sort of a spiral.

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And once the gyre fulfilled,
then another gyre begins.

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It's a fantastic idea.

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"On that unfashionable
gyre again,

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a farmer whose well
runs dry, a woman

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whose son they killed in
jail and refused to hand her

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the corpse, a magistrate
in a small town

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where the young men can find
sex or wives or decent work,

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is this how it starts?

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Drought, unrequited
grief, desire

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that deserves sacrifice where
truth and justice are only

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a spark?

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And before the self-immolated
martyr's body cools off,

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a fire has grown within tensions
where new bodies volunteer

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themselves as fuel for mind
and power beyond their knowing,

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or historical
delusion is rekindled.

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Now new shipping
lines registered.

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Access to markets
and natural resources

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guided by feasibility studies.

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Estimates of low birth rates
beyond the migrants' floods,

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the burdens of the
welfare state beyond even

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outcome of persistent fears of
the dilution of some pure race,

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beyond them rises the
sun riding up the seas.

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The rivers touched with salt,
a holy vision that bafflingly

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came through, beyond
mind and rescue

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is the sense of impending
grief and relief.

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An image of us as the last
survivors having eaten

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and drunk everything,
a sphere beyond repair

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that is ours alone.

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Oh master, is this how
it begins or ends?"

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The master is Yeats, of course.

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