Me, read­ing “The Second Coming”, by WB Yeats. Copyleft 2009. (MP4, 700 KB, recorded 8 December 2009 on my iPhone.) Usage rights are uni­ver­sal with attri­bu­tion or a linkback. Don’t serve the file off my net. Download it and serve yourself.

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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?

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