Teen Heart throb
My idol as a teenager was Bob Geldof--later Sir Bob in honour of his Live Aid fundraisers and his work in Africa. Tonight I watched a BBC documentary he did about poet W.B. Yeats, another of my favs. It was fascinating. I didn’t know much about Yeats’s life. He was a bit of a wing nut but also a visionary and pretty handy with the old lingo. Here’s a famous poem he wrote in the wake of WWI and in the midst of the Irish civil war:
The Second Coming
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.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Gives you chills, doesn’t it? In the wake of Trump and Brexit, I’ve seen this poem show up on Facebook as we wonder what new beast is aborning. Below is a review of the documentary, which featured readings of Yeats’s poems by: Bono, Van Morrison, Colin Farrell, Bill Nighy, Liam Neeson, and other stars of the Irish stage and screen. One of the things I loved about it is that Geldof hasn’t changed much from the angry young man I so admired as a teenager.
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