Poetry Monday: These Are The Clouds

These Are The Clouds

These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye;
The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,
Till that be tumbled that was lifted high
And discord follows upon unison,
And all things at one common level lie.
And therefore, friend, if your great race were run
And these things came, so much the more thereby
Have you made greatness your companion,
Although it be for children that you sigh;
Those are the clouds above the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye.

William Butler Yeats
1910

Yeats' great poem "The Second Coming" seems written for our age, but it is not the only one.  Among the evil perpetrated by our rough beast in the White House are the obsessively jealous efforts to reverse every beneficial act by President Obama, even to the level of proposing to further overturn nutritional guidelines for school children's lunches championed by Michelle Obama, and doing so on her birthday.

 Yet none of these clouds diminish the greatness of the Obama years, while any photograph, soundbite or paragraph that remind us of those years can only reveal the contrast with the current residents.  And it is worth noting on Martin Luther King day that the fact that the Obamas were the first African Americans in the White House does not appear to be irrelevant in motivating this racist regime.

  Also informing our reading of this poem is the shameful specter of the degraded Senate we can expect this week in their refusal to meet constitutional responsibilities in the most justifiable Impeachment of a President in US history. It may or may not be a source of solace that this dark time has its own predecessors.

But there is some solace, for those of us who made companions of this greatness, in the fact that this country did elect Barack Obama as President, twice, and that his accomplishments righted wrongs, benefited people and addressed the problems that threaten the future.