POEMS FOR AN ASTERISK PRESIDENCY*

* For non-sports fans: an * is placed beside a record that is tainted because unusual circumstances or some kind of cheating contributed to it.

THE SECOND COMING

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

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.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

                                  ________________________

                    

Rafael Jesús González 2017:

                  A woman said I was not polite
                   to the opposition,
                      that I was harsh
                        and did not encourage
                   discourse.

                      Perhaps if I were Christ,
                       I could say, "Forgive them
                              for they know not what they do."
                        Or the queen, and apologize
                     for stubbing my executioner's toes.

                     But only if I knew
                      the executioners
                                were mine only.

                What courtesy have I the right to give
                  to them who break the bones,

                                the souls of my brothers,

                                                    my sisters;

                          deny bread, books
                               to the hungry,
                          the children;
                                   medicine, healing
                                       to the sick;
                    roofs to the homeless;

                  who spoil the oceans,
                           lay waste the forests
                                   and the deserts,
                        violate the land?

                       Affability on the lips
                  of outrage
                      is a sin and blasphemy
                          I'll not be guilty of.

             © Rafael Jesús González 2017