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Sunday, 14 June 2015

Rough Beast, by Stevie gentle Haston.

You go through life with few friends, or indeed enemies who can entertain. Well, perhaps it's just you who do not have the ears to hear. Or eyes to see, or sword to thrust, or head to bash the thick walls of your servitude to dust.
So you do a bit of climbing, don't you?



Betwixt a mans span lies a life wanting to be spent. 

But then one day you enter the Lost Castle of your Desires, and  with open arms and tears,  you come to terms with your authentic desire. You want to ascend to heaven, you want the good fight, you need to vanquish incredible foes, and stand triumphant at the pinacle of all glory.You might pause to take a small bow, and with a sly modest grin, say, "it was nought, anybody could have done this thing".

Pull bonny lad.

This new bit of cliff, is it any good? "Was Helen beautiful, was she heavy maintenance?" As you traverse around the bay clutching huge water warn flutes, your eye is drawn into the Widening gyre. The ceiling is full of Gozitan colours, the sea tones reverberate, almost causing sounds, and your senses broaden and morph to encompass it's majesty.

 
A sky boat, the gozo ferry, very furry in the pastel clouds.

So all other climbs seem 'mere anarchy', this climb is the great dictator! And you are at once reminded of your mortality, your weakness, your pathetic ordinary lack of conviction.  Surely Shirly, this route is the Second Coming, the dawn of the new Jihad, The Eternal War, never ending, the route that overhangs forever. 
 And if you pick up this heavy gauntlet, this terminator arm of such dreadful heaviness, what kind of beast will you become? A steroid stuffed Lemur with hands covered in scars, or something stronger?   
  

 If "twenty centuries of stoney sleep" suffice for the design of a new body and structured mind  to "Slouch" up this route, a new birth, a rebirth, to emerge in the "pitiless sun".
You will be the "Rough beast", and you will be full of "Passionate intensity". If you haven't twigged, this is a little appreciation of W.B.Yeats who wrote the poem Second Coming, I have plundered it for words, and lines. 
I thank him for breathing poetry into my soul, and possibly saving my life.
He also wrote the song "A DJ saved my life", but not many people know that.