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 convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

"The Second Coming"
W.B. Yeats

I happened to be on the New York City subway on its 100th anniversary, October 28, 2004. Barbara and I had planned a trip to NYC in conjunction with a wedding in northern New Jersey, and so we were pleasantly surprised to see one of the ceremonial "antique" trains running along side our sterile modern one as we worked our way uptown to the Whitney.

More interesting than the old subway cars, though, were all the celebrations of the century that were put up in place of ads inside the cars themselves. There were winners of a citywide poetry contest, artists's renditions of famous subway routes, the usual bureaucratic self-congratulatory proclamations and, most inexplicably, the first stanza of W.B. Yeats' "The Second Coming."

If you took a college-prep English course in high school, I'm sure you still remember the astonishing imagery of the last two lines of the final stanza:

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

There's good, there's great, and then there's immortal. I've never been able to tear those two lines from my memory. But I'd forgotten the rest. And then, reprinted as part of a centennial celebration for the New York subway, the first stanza appeared before my eyes.

The centennial happened to be the day after Barbara had left an evening on Broadway with The Producers by saying, "That really wasn't very good, was it?" Let's just say that she's a newspaper reporter, and anything that isn't realistic or literal has a tough time impressing her. But I pointed out the stanza on the placard, the last two lines in particular, and she was truly impressed.

"I guess I should've paid more attention to that poetry crap back in high school."

If I remember my criticism correctly, Yeats was writing in reaction to World War I, the Great War, the War to End All Wars. He had witnessed the collective failure of leadership in Europe and wondered what might break the stalemate of the trenches. In any case, he seemed to see no way out other than divine intervention. And he wasn't exactly a fan of divine intervention. He saw, much more than Hell in a handbasket. He saw Hell on earth, Revelation writ large. You know, like The Omen.

It's a cool poem--even without that unintentionally prophetic comment on last week's election--but I still have no idea what it has to do with the New York subway. There was no explanation on the placard, just the stanza and subway centennial logo. Still, if you're gonna err on the side of putting too much or too little poetry in the public view, I think you ought to go with too much.

You never know. You might even get someone to rethink his or her way of thinking. To paraphrase (very loosely) Thomas Jefferson, a little personal revolution every so often is a good thing.

Jon Worley is more than patient enough to wait out the current second coming.