Turning and turning
Within the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart
The center cannot hold
And a blood dimmed tide
Is loosed upon the worldNothing is sacred
The ceremony sinks
Innocence is drowned
In anarchy
The best lack conviction
Given some time to think
And the worst are full of passion
Without mercy— Joni Mitchell
This is Mitchell’s interpretation of the first verse of W. B. Yeat’s The Second Coming.
Her version was the first I heard, and I still have the first verse imprinted in my brain.
The closing, however, is better in the original:
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?