Thanks, I actually found it from reading Joan Didion's "
Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (really cool collection of 60's essays by the way) and really like the visual impact.
Yeah, the images it portrays are really cool and the use of language "the centre cannot hold", "The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensit" - kind of describes the UFO scene!!
Here is another great Yeats poem called "Long Legged Fly", which I always thought was about the extremely delicate and intense moments that bring out the purity of genius from people. I recall the first stanza being about the moment of military genius of Julias Casear, the second stanza being about the amazing power of Helen of Troy's unconscious beauty and the last one about Michael Angelo painting the Sistine Chapel. Yeats was amazing!!!
Long-legged
Fly
That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps ate spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand under his head.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.
That the topless towers be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move most gently if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practise a tinker shuffle
Picked up on a street.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
Her mind moves upon silence.
That girls at puberty may find
The first Adam in their thought,
Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
Keep those children out.
There on that scaffolding reclines
Michael Angelo.
With no more sound than the mice make
His hand moves to and fro.
Like a long-leggedfly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.
... so you can't go wrong really.
