When falconers lose their voices

 

Chinua Achabe attributed the title of his celebrated novel, ‘Things fall apart’ to a line from W B Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming.’  


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.


Yeats wrote this poem in 1919, just after World War I ended, in the early years of the Russian Revolution and at the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. Any of these could have caused despair. Today, more than a hundred years later, some unknown poet somewhere in the world could write or indeed may have written a poem that echoes Yeats’ sentiments. And if we look back we might even conclude that anarchy is not an accident or is sporadic but in fact a permanent feature of the world we live in; only it comes in pretty wrapping or is sugar coated so we don’t recognise it or call it some sweet-sounding name. Like ‘democracy.’  

But what of falcons and falconers? The relationship between the two is tenuous; one controls and the other is controlled. Yeats doesn’t tell us who the falconer is and who the falcons are; just that the latter has moved beyond earshot. But is that why ‘the centre’ cannot hold? What is ‘the centre’ anyway? And is it only because the centre lost its hold that ‘mere anarchy (has been loosened) on the world?’ Was the ‘ceremony of innocence’ swimming happily in placid waters before that and is it now drowning because of stormy seas, treacherous currents and inability to swim or float?

Yeats paints a bleak picture. The prognosis is dismal. He unceremoniously rubbishes the hope (of salvation, of whatever kind) embedded in the term ‘the second coming,’ likening it to a deformed, ill-willed and even uncivilised creature (slouching towards Bethlehem to be born).  It is one of the most powerful poetic expressions of hopelessness.

He plays with the sentiments of the reader, deliberately raising hope (‘surely some revelation is at hand: /surely the Second Coming is at hand’) only to dash it to pieces claiming that what emerges out of the spirit of the world (Spiritus Mundi) is the ungainly beast referred to above. There’s no god-figure, no avatar of the divinity associated with ‘the first coming,’ but instead a warning that what could rise from the plethora of the world’s uncountable tumours is worse than what is or what is on its way out.

Somehow the words ‘falconer’ and ‘centre’ in the poem are disturbing for they imply some element of goodness, which of course is debatable at best. Just think, ‘Washington.’ Or the Deep State. The Capitalist Class. And the adjuncts: the EU, the UN, Israel, UK, QUAD. If THAT centre cannot hold, I won’t cry. If falcons have unfettered themselves from the dictates of the relevant falconers, good on them.

Let’s talk about the falcons of our time. Those who believe they are god’s chosen people: omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and yes even omnivorous, devouring anything and everything that gets in their way. How long have they played falconer and how long have the falcons been lured by their voices! I do not blame any falcon for wanting to fly beyond the long voice-arm of the falconer.  Simply put, the arrogance and impunity with which the world’s falconers have operated for many decades have endured that ‘the blood-dimmed tide’ was loosened a long time ago and that innocence didn’t have a second chance.

Things fell apart. Things are falling apart. Fallen things, broken things, are mended, refashioned, and still serve well. W H Auden writing almost twenty years after Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming,’ offered:

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
                  History to the defeated
May say alas but cannot help or pardon.

Someone wrote somewhere that having picking up a copy of ‘Another Time’ in a bookstore, Auden had flipped to this poem (‘Spain’ in the original rendition and ‘Spain 1937’ in this book, published in 1940), and noted on the side of this final verse, ‘this is wrong!’

The stars ain’t dead, the animals have not lost their sight, we are not alone with our day, time is long and history refuses to say to the defeated, ‘alas but cannot help or pardon!’

Long live the falcons. As for falconers, may they acquire new and less pernicious skills.