Written piece
Questions for the Ghost of William Butler Yeats re: The Second Coming
Les Morison
South Africa
About this piece
The poem is about calling on a great poet of the past whose death in 1939 was on the eve of a great evil. The poem asks the ghost of the great poet what he would say about the modern day, the weapons industries, and concludes with a cry for help from the ancestral poet.
Questions for the Ghost of
William Butler Yeats
re: ‘The Second Coming’
William Butler Yeats died in 1939,
the year of the military men,
the year the poppies bloomed again.
You warned of a centre not holding;
of the rising of a blood-dimmed tide,
of desert sands enfolding, and
I wondered if are you glad that you died?
Would you warn us, were you here today,
of the melting of the middle ground,
would you see the shift to the extremities,
of the weapons industries, what would you say?
Of adults who encourage children to despise;
who use righteousness to smother empathy,
who drive identity to the point of insanity?
Of how we lie to those who do not speak our tongue;
of how, for them, we have only money, and the gun,
in return for which, are we about to receive, the bomb?
Would you send us out to listen for
the cries from over the wall,
would you show us where to carve a door?
Would you be transfixed by a digital screen
on which wave a million virtual flags,
stars & stripes, adorning skeletons in rags?
And will you ask the lecture hall, (should you be invited):
‘Did I not ask you to work together…?
Did I not explain that it is not enough to just be clever?’
Will you warn that social divisions act like military ones;
cutting through the streets seeking blood-daubed doors,
bullies roaming again, claiming to settle ancient scores?
D’you remember William, as a child, playing with others?
D’you think that you could help us to remember how?
We have grown so alone watching, watching, watching phones?
Could you help us to redefine, re-find, each other,
the young, the sick, the aged mother?
Could you show us how to channel rage,
to perform something unifying on a stage?
Yes, the best do lack all conviction,
Yet they need direction, so I ask you these questions:
Will you, William, help to re-open the doors of learning?
Will, you William Butler Yeats, show us how to stop the burning?