anarchival

I’m not sure who originally wrote this poem. I found an unattributed copy of it online years ago (I no longer have the link), which I cleaned up a little to create this version.

Twas the Night Before Christmas,
He lived all alone,
In a one bedroom house
made of plaster and stone.
I looked all about,
a strange sight I did see,
No tinsel, no presents,
not even a tree.

No stocking by mantle,
just boots filled with sand,
on the wall hung pictures
of far distant lands.
The soldier lay sleeping,
silent, alone,
curled up on the floor
in this one bedroom home.

I realized the families,
that I saw this night,
owed their lives to these soldiers
who were willing to fight.
Soon round the world,
the children would play,
and grownups would celebrate
a bright Christmas day.

They all enjoyed freedom,
each month of the year,
because of the soldiers
like the one lying here.
Then the soldier rolled over,
with a voice soft and pure,
whispered, “Carry on, Santa,
It’s Christmas Day. All is secure.”

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?