Joni Mitchell's Sailing to Byzantium

Joni Mitchell is on the small stage, singular, only her voice and the acoustic guitar, singing a song that I don't believe she has ever performed live, much less solo - a song whose lyrics are taken from WB Yeats' poem "Sailing to Byzantium"

and all the English majors in the room close their eyes and sway their heads as they sing along:

Turning and turning
Within the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart
The centre cannot hold
And a blood dimmed tide
Is loosed upon the worldNothing is sacred
The ceremony sinks
Innocence is drowned
In anarchy

The best lack conviction

Given some time to think

And the worst are full of passion

Without mercy

Surely some revelation is at hand

Surely it's the second coming

And the wrath has finally taken form

For what is this rough beast

Its hour come at last

Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born

Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born

Hoping and hoping

As if with my weak faith

The spirit of this world

Would heal and rise

Vast are the shadows

That straddle and strafe

And struggle in the darkness

Troubling my eyes

Shaped like a lion

It has the head of a man

With a gaze as black

And pitiless as the sun

As it's moving its slow thighs

Across the desert sands

Through dark indignant

Reeling falcons

Surely some revelation is at hand

Surely it's the second coming

And the wrath has finally taken form

For what is this rough beast

Its hour come at last

Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born

Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born

(Head of a man, shape of a lion)

Raging and raging

It rises from the deep

Opening its eyes

After twenty centuries

Vexed to a nightmare

Out of a stony sleep

By a rocking cradle

By the Sea of Galilee

Surely some revelation is at hand

Surely it's the second coming

And the wrath has finally taken form

For what is this rough beast

Its hour come at last

Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born

Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born

(Head of a man, shape of a lion)

And the English majors (Marjo among them), as Ms. Mitchell bows her head in reverence to the impact of her song, move among the audience, distributing well-worn copies of the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, each with a page marked to this poem:

The Second Coming (Sailing to Byzantium)

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.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming!

Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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