The Second Turning, by Noizgenie A Homage to Yeats in an Age of Unraveling Yeats wrote The Second Coming in 1919, seeing the world tilting on its axis—war had gutted Europe, revolution smoldered in Russia, and Ireland teetered toward civil war. He sensed something vast and unrelenting stirring beneath the surface, something inevitable yet unknowable. We stand again at such a moment. The gyre widens, the past erodes, and what rises in its place—whether ruin or rebirth—remains uncertain. This poem does not claim prophecy, only observation. The weight of history turns upon itself once more. ⸻ The Second Turning Turning and turning in the widening gyre, The people cannot hear the people’s voice. The law is dust; the center cannot hold; Unmaking is loosed upon the land. The flood of rage rises unchecked, and everywhere The ceremony of reason is undone; The wise grow weary, while the fervent Are drunk with their own righteousness. Surely some reckoning is at hand; Surely the wheel does not turn again. The wheel! Hardly are the words out When a vast image out of the nation’s fever Troubles my sight: somewhere beneath the glaring lights, A shape with shifting form and a mouth of fire, A gaze blank and pitiless as the void, Moves through the halls of shattered order, While all about it, Reel shadows of the cast out and betrayed. The darkness thickens once more; but now I know That half a century of toil and hope Is vexed to nightmare by an unseen hand, And what rough force, its hour come round at last, Rises from the wreckage to be born? [Words, Production, and Direction by Noizgenie.] [Cover Art Direction by Noizgenie. © 2025 Noizgenie.]
