At Midnight
“At midnight
on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds,
nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames
begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot
singe a sleeve.”
— From Byzantium, by
William Butler Yeats
“The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre–
To be redeemed from fire by fire.”
— From Four Quartets, by
Thomas Stearns Eliot
“Look around you. There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and Uncertainty that comes with once reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in…”
— Prepare for the Weirdness, by Hunter S. Thompson, quoted in a sermon for Pentecost Sunday, 2005
“If you passed, you got to live, and if you failed you were burned alive on a pyre that’s now the Transgender Studies Building.”
— Baccalaureate address at the interfaith worship service, Princeton University, on Pentecost Sunday, June 4, 2006
Review:
“At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement….”