Where "the centre cannot hold" Came From

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.

-William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

I've loved that poem for years. I've read or heard people say "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold" fairly often, and wonder how many people realize it's from an old classic poem.

Time for a bike ride, to watch spring blossom out and see the last of the snowbanks melt away into salty, gritty, sand covered piles left to remind us of how many teeth winter still has in this age of climate wierdness.

And here's a photo of red clover in bloom that my pal Clint sent me from his shack outside Nashville to cheer me up in the slush of my discontent, and a second photo from my brother of two albino deer shot near my mother's house in Northern Wisconsin.

Nice to know as fucked up as things seem right now, some parts of nature just keep rolling along.