In honor of our feathered friend above, falco peregrinus, 3 of which just fledged from their nest atop Cal's campanile last month I bring a timely poem by Yeats:
The Second Coming (W.B. Yeats)
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 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?
Il Dufus has made his first move, but will fare no better than his lantern jawed inspiration. It is a bit late for the storm troopers when the Empire is dying. Truth be told, it won't be overmuch missed either. The oligarchs are busy asset stripping the staggering ruins and the leadership is unstable on its feet and in its mind and soul. They used to say that the universe was turtles all the way down, but it appears that our unit is turning turtle. Very few species of turtles can right themselves from that inverted position. Strangely, their ancient shape is not unlike a newly discovered shape named the Gömböc, the first convex three dimensional shape with but two equilibrium points, only one of which is stable. That is easily enough to trump both our so-called leader and our economy, both of which are not only pointless but inherently unstable
Should the Empire fail to somehow both right and redirect itself, Shelley's long ago vision will no doubt hold true for the exceptional and indispensible imperious cuckoo strutting about the globe in stolen eagle's plumage. Ozymandias P.B. Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
It's an open thread, so have at it. The floor is yours .
Cross posted from caucus99percent.com