second coming

I had lunch with Spence today - he's one of the friends I saw for the first time in a while at Red's funeral. The one who told L every story about me he could remember in the five minutes I left them alone together. To be fair, it was probably a joint effort, but I'm sure he was the instigator. 

We talked, about a lot of things. People and things we remember. Strange times. He said he didn't really talk to anyone when he got back either, including his wife. I gather they're doing a little better now. 

He came along with me to pick up Sherlock, but ditched me when he saw the tidal wave of children coming toward us...heh. Something about having to do the shopping. Excuses, excuses. I took Sherlock to kung fu. He's learning to do this jump kick where you turn all the way around in mid-air and then inflict grievous bodily harm on the foam pad someone's holding for you. They're encouraged to yell while doing it. Quite an impressive sight.

On the way home, he asked me why I was sad. I told him I'd been thinking about people I miss. "Like I miss Grand-mère?" he said. Yes, like that. "People shouldn't die," he said. "It's not right." Leaving aside the difficulties of overpopulation, sometimes I agree. Sometimes not.

And then, perhaps inevitably, we talked about zombies.

-

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats

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?