CORRECTION: IN MY ORIGINAL PIECE, I REFERRED TO MR. ZIMMERMAN AS A “WHITE GUY.” MR. ZIMMERMAN IS BEING DEFENDED AS BEING OF MIXED DESCENT, WITH BOTH HISPANIC AND ANGLO PARENTS. ACTUALLY, GIVEN THE CONTEXT, I FIND THAT EVEN MORE TRAGIC AND DON’T THINK IT CHANGES THAT MUCH. WHILE READING SOME MORE OF THE COVERAGE, IT BECAME OBVIOUS THAT WHAT LOOK LIKE PUBLIC STREETS EITHER AREN’T IN GATED COMMUNITIES OR IT’S NOW OK FOR LOCAL TWITS TO DRIVE AROUND LIKE THE GUY WITH NO SHIRT IN TRAILER PARK BOYS AND BUG PEOPLE, FOLLOWED BY SHOOTING THEM WHICH IS A STRETCH THAT JC TREMBLAY HADN’T QUITE REACHED. YET…
I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born. –WB Yeats
When did Florida become Ulster or Pretoria 20 years ago?
When I say the name Trayvon Martin, does it mean anything to you?” Melissa Harris-Perry asked her MSNBC audience on Saturday. “If it doesn’t, it should.”
Harris-Perry then took some time to explain who Trayvon Martin is: a 17-year-old, unarmed black teenager who wasallegedly shot and killed by a man in Florida in late February, after the man saw him walking down a street and thought he looked suspicious. The case has attracted substantial attention, in part because the man, George Zimmerman, has admitted to shooting Martin but has not been arrested or charged with any crime.
I enjoy listening to Melissa’s work and discussions with her guests. I’m not sure why she was denied promotion to full professor at Princeton – They have a quota on attractive women, Black, Liberal Political Scientists who get opinion gigs on MSNBC and PBS? They still have investments in slavery? Paul Krugman scares them – but their loss is Tulane’s, the nation’s, and MSNBC’s gain. I was steaming over the Trayvon Martin situation anyway, and her commentary pushed a lot of buttons.
Usually at this time of year, I’m writing something about the Irish, or Ireland or Catholicism. I’ve been following An Problacht, (The Republic) and watching Rugby on both BBC and The Rugby Channel. Caught a brief bit of Young Cassidy last night on the way out to a very non-Gaelic supper that did include roast beef and cabbage. I wore a dark green t-shirt, a tweed jacket and a plaid scarf. I looked something like Rod Taylor in the damn movie. I saw some wild pictures of Shane McGowan looking like a punch-drunk old man and heard a bit of the Rocky Road to Dublin. I’ve got a copy of Fox Crow on my kindle that seems to be set in a cross between the Land of the 7 Kingdoms and Donegal. I’ve been getting primed, but what the hell, what for?
watch?v=fUM9J2idxbE
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Tags: black helicopter watch, politics & government by Mike Farrell
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