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William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

The Second Coming (1919)

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?

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989), Poetry Foundation

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Dispatches

wrd Kemp, “Leo Varadkar’s Ireland has washed its hands of Ukraine; Before discussing Britain’s role in the world, the Taoiseach should apologise for his own nation’s failures,” The Telegraph, October 7, 2023 (5:51 pm);

2) William Mauldin, “Russia Seeks Seat on U.N. Human Rights Panel After Ejection Over Ukraine War; Moscow could try to leverage grain, arms sales to win votes, analysts say,” Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2023 (12:00 pm ET);

3) Summer Said, Benoit Faucon, and Stephen Kalin, “Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks; The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gave the final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut,” Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2023 (updated at 5:15 pm);

Analysis

Iran gave the go-ahead for the massive surprise attack on Israel by Hamas on October 8, 2023, according to Hamas.

The hostilities potentially could lead to a nuclear confrontation between the United States and Russia, which in fact occurred 50 years during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The first stanza of William Butler Yeats’s famous poem, inspired by the experience of World War I, comes readily to mind:

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.

We warned, many months ago, that the belief the Ukraine War could be contained and would not spread was a great illusion. Now we are beginning to get a taste of what real international anarchy may be like.

The situation is fraught. Hamas is supported by Iran. Many in Israel will see Hamas acting as agents of Iran. Under this interpretation, Hamas’s attack on Israel could be considered to be an attack by Iran on Israel. Whether Iran exercises the direction and control of Hamas to make their acts those of Iran is a separate question.

The Israeli responses, not only against Hamas and the Gaza strip but also against Iran could potentially bring Russia and tge United States into the conflict. Worth recalling are the recent acts of rapprochement between Russia and Iran and Russia and Saydi Arabia.

The Trenchant Observer

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