Rough Beast
The title is a reference to the horse in yesterday’s entry of 6:13 PM.
The time of that entry, 6:13, is a deliberate reference* to the date of a June 13, 2003, entry, for the birthday of W. B. Yeats.
That entry contains the following —
Behold a Pale Horse:
A link in memory of Gregory Peck,
which leads to…
“It was not a mere soldier’s courage, like gripping a weapon and charging the foe: it was like charging Death itself on his pale horse.
Even at his best, his island parrot, the better loved of the two, spoke no word he was not taught to speak by his master. How then has it come about that this man of his, who is a kind of parrot and not much loved, writes as well as or better than his master? For he wields an able pen, this man of his, no doubt of that. Like charging Death himself on his pale horse. His own skill, learned in the counting house, was in making tallies and accounts, not in turning phrases. Death himself on his pale horse: those are words he would not think of. Only when he yields himself up to this man of his do such words come.”
— J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize Lecture
of Dec. 10, 2003