Life imagined as fiction…

The widening gyre

I first came across the poem some time ago. Joni Mitchell’s version that she put to song with acoustic guitar. I listened. It caught my imagination. But… what was it about? What did those allusions mean? It seemed a serious song despite Joni’s melodically soft-voice. Deep. Dark. Impregnated with meaning and a sense of foreboding. It was a poem you listened to and then had to think about. It was William Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming. It was on reading it that this scene unfolded in my mind.

THE CAFE is a small island of light in the misty grey of the city. It is half-empty, The rain has only now stopped but its scent clings in the air, a strangely metallic smell that like the coming of night induces a state of uncertainty and unease. Miriam watches water drip from the awning onto the pavement. Its regularity creates the impression of measured time in an age when the old measures are breaking down. It is reassuring, like something that has been and always will be.

The rain has come and gone. Passing showers. Thin threads that mist the streets. Soft enough to blur the lights seen through the window without washing them away. Miriam likes it that way. She chose a seat by the window out of habit. From here she can watch without being noticed. Her mind drifts between her thoughts and the world passing by outside.

Mark arrives late. He drops into the chair opposite her and drags a hand across his face as if to wash away the rain drops. “Sorry. The streets are a mess. Half the intersections are blocked by protest marches tonight. Different groups, different slogans. I couldn’t tell who was marching for what.”

Miriam smiles faintly. “That’s the new normal. Everyone’s shouting. No one’s listening. Utter confusion.”

Mark orders coffee, flat white, then exhales and removes his jacket. The rain has beaded it with water. But there is something else. It’s his eyes. They are usually alert. Now they show a dull lack of focus Miriam associates with people who read too many reports and no longer know which ones to believe.

“You look like the war came to town,” Miriam says.

He gives a half-smile. “In a way it did. Despite the weather the streets are filled with demonstrations, some against the war, some thinking it doesn’t go far enough. You can’t tell who-is-who anymore. Once it was easier. There was the left and there was the right. They were clearly delineated. Now there’s sometimes a convergence between the two. A blurring of their demands although they disagree on so much. It gets confusing.”

The waitress brings him coffee. Miriam remembers he used to add sugar to mask the bitterness but now he drinks it without. They speak in fragments. Their work. The blustery, cold weather. Ordinary things that disguise a weariness with the world.

Miriam stirs her coffee and watches the whirlpool spin. “It feels like everything’s spinning faster these days. Wars in the Middle East and on the plains of central Europe. And in America an ideological war that threatens to become kinetic. Mobs of uniformed thugs plucking people off the streets and imprisoning them in camps or exiling them who knows where. All it would take would be some hothead taking a shot at someone prominent and down goes the most powerful nation in the world in a chaos of violence. And then there’s the trade wars with China and Canada and just about everyone else. Every headline you read, every argument you hear, it’s all centrifugal.”

“Centrifugal,” Mark echoes, amused. “The physics of despair. You sound like Yeats.”

She looks up. “That poem’s been stalking me,” she says. “The one about the widening gyre. The falcon that can’t hear the falconer. The collapsing centre. How does it go? Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold, anarchy is unleashed upon the world?”.

Mark looks at her. “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere innocence is drowned. The best lack conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Yes, I remember the poem. It’s one of despair. I remember it, well, some of it anyway. It made such an impression on me when I first read it. And that bit about the worst being full of passionate intensity… maybe they aren’t the worst but the people on the street tonight sure are full of passionate intensity.”

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? That’s the last line. Poignant lines, those. Timely. Like he was writing about now,” Mirian adds.

“Those lines… Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold… I used to wonder what Yeats was talking about. We studied the poem when I did my creative writing masters. We concluded that the centre is the order and stability that once existed but that now, thanks to conflicts between and within nations, it is collapsing. The old norms and values are breaking down. The world is spinning away from its center… humanity is losing touch with its guiding principles, with moral authority. Yeat’s widening gyre… it’s the widening chasm that opens as old certainties collapse and civilised order unravels. ‘Gyre’ evokes a vortex, the 2000-year cycle of epochs that Yeats thought shaped human destiny.”

“A vortex like you stirred in your coffee cup”, Mark adds with a mischevious grin.

Miriam stops for a moment and glances at Mark. She thinks the coffee must be improving his downbeat demeanour. “It’s not only about conflict between nations. It’s also about nations being white-anted from within, their values and traditions being eaten out by forces unleashed and fed by disinformation whose sole purpose is to create intercommunal conflict and distrust of all those institutions that once made up the centre. So what we get is a sense of upheaval… uncertainty… an unease that lies just below the surface and sometimes erupts. Maybe that’s what you saw on the streets tonight… the eruption. I think that Yeats thought the world was spiralling into an era of destruction and anarchy. If only he could see it now. Everywhere you look — Europe, Asia, the Middle East — it feels like the map is shaking itself apart. Like the ground is slipping away into the abyss.”

“Division is a weapon now.” Mark’s voice is low. “It always was, but the social media channels spin everything, amplify every grievance. Other cultures , migrants and the like, are turned into folk devils and blamed for things they don’t do. If there is nothing to blame them for it is made up. Outrage follows.

“Yes, that’s how it works. If there is nothing substantial to campaign on they just invent something and fan the flames of outrage. People like to be outraged and angered and to feel like they are victims. Their sense of victimisation gives them energy. But it does not give them direction. Those behind it expolit how they feel. Is is they who give them direction. People don’t have to think things through for themselves. Their minds are now made up by those who know how to do that. People choose their own reality and cling to it as if it’s life itself. The result is Yeats’ ‘blood-dimmed tide’… waves of unchecked violence and anarchy. Societal chaos and the drowning of innocence. Destruction and conflict overwhelm the world.”

Miriam shakes her head. “It reminds me of the final act of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung… the Twilight of the Gods… where Valhalla, the home of the gods, is destroyed by fire. It symbolises the collapse of the old order… a cleansing to make way for a new world order. Wagner based it on Norse Ragnarok mythology and Christian themes of apocalyptic cleansing and rebirth. The opera ends with a transcendent hope for a new beginning after the twilight of the gods’ reign. But what Yeats was talking about was transformation into something less positive… into destruction and chaos.

“When Yeats wrote that the best lack all conviction, was he saying that the reasonable voices are lost in the swarm? Overwhelmed? Exhausted? Conviction goes with the departing sense of the certainty and continuity we once had. The loudest, the angriest, they shape the stories and people let them form their world view. It’s like reason and critical thinking take a holiday.”

Mark sips his coffee and looks at Miriam. “Yeats saw a monster being born from the world’s fear. That’s his ‘what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’. It’s a chilling metaphor for a new dark age or force that is emerging. It symbolises the rise of a new and frightening order from the world’s disorder.

“Our rough beasts are viral lies and viral rage eating at the seams of our society.” David gestures at his phone on the table. “One meme, one doctored video. Wars are sewn together with rumor and half-truth. It’s like a contagion. History looping back, nation after nation arming. But it’s not just war anymore. The lies spread faster than the bombs.”

“You mean disinformation.”

“I mean infection,” he says, his voice tightening. “Rumors that mutate faster than anyone can debunk them. People attacking each other online. Manufactured anger that mutates into real anger like some virus replicating and spreading. Polarisation rips at societies. The middle ground, Yeats’ centre where solutions can be negotiated, disappears. Every side is convinced the other is evil. I work with the media monitoring group, remember? I see the data every day. The posts, the false images, the fabricated stories.”

Miriam studies him. He looks older than he is. His eyes are shadowed not by sleeplessness but by disillusion. She watches him closely. Mark worked in journalism before joining the media monitoring company. She thinks of how many images he must see, the faces of the injured, the devastation. Events that might be staged. False flag incidents intended to create outrage and anger and a thirst for revenge. Data that is bait for the uncritical.

He’s changed, she realises. He was always a serious sort of person but he also had a lightenss to his personality. That was when they met. Years ago. She had enrolled in a creative writing masters at the university. Mark was working for some media organisation. She never did understand what it was that he did other than it was writing. They became friends while living in a sharehouse. But sharehouses break up and people go their own ways. That is what happened. It was only through the serendipity of attending the same conference that they later renewed their friendship.

“You’ve seen too much of it,” she says softly. “You used to believe information could help people see clearly. That journalism could help people make sense of the world.”

Mark laughes. “I used to believe a lot of things.”

She thinks of Yeats again, the lines she’d memorised years ago but never felt until recently… the lines about the world turning too fast, the centre coming undone. “It’s as if humanity’s lost its gravity,” she murmurs. “Everything spinning outward… like in a centrifuge, moving away from the centre.”

Mark glances at her. He realises she’s struck the thought he’d been circling. “If the centre’s gone,” he says slowly, “…something else fills the vacuum. That’s the loud, the brutal, the malicious… Yeats’ rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem.”

Miriam says nothing immediate in response. She continues to look across the table at Mark. Their cups sit empty, the taste of coffee submerged below the intensity of their conversation. “And out there in the world… real people are dying while we sift the digital shadows for truth. Sometimes I think that wars now begin as whispers online before they ever fire a shot.”

Mark leans forward, his voice quiet and sharp. “They do. You might think it’s all new, brewed in the back rooms and by the algorithms. But maybe this is what Yeats saw coming. The beast wasn’t a man or a creature. It was a gathering, a disembodied momentum that worshipped chaos as freedom.”

Neither speak for a time. Rain is falling again, not heavy but not light.

Mark leans back and rubs the bridge of his nose. It’s an unconscious habit that signals thinking. “You want to talk about prophecy, fine. But the centre’s not holding because people sold it off. Truth for clicks. Outrage for profit and political gain. That’s the battlefield now. Someone sends a deepfake, a forged AI photo, a false report or one about something that didn’t happen at all, and it shapes reality more than the facts do. By the time it’s debunked no one cares. The lie has already fought its war. Mission accomplished”.

“Are you still writing?” she asks.

He hesitates. “Not much. Words don’t stand up to algorithms anymore. They drown.”

“Then maybe you need to change what you write about.” Her tone invites no irony. She speaks with the quiet conviction of someone trying to restore faith not just in him but in life itself.

A burst of light flares. Blue and white and red. It moves in the direction of the square. Sirens sound. Mark instinctively turns toward the sound, then looks back at Miriam.

“Demo’s turning ugly,” he says. “It’s always the same. Just wait for it. Someone will post that the police attacked first. The police will say it was the crowd. The videos look real until you slow them down. Then you realise one is from a month ago. Different demonstration. It’s information warfare, locally brewed for a local audience.”

Miriam sighs. “We’re supposed to be living in the information age, not the hall of mirrors. Social media videos shine a selective light on the story the person posting them wants to push. We see ourselves reflected in the flickering image… our selected beliefs and attitudes, I mean.”

“You ever think maybe that’s what Yeats meant by the beast slouching toward Bethlehem?”. Mark taps the table softly. “Not an apocalypse of fire. Just collapse by confusion and disillusion. A winding down. Humanity devoured by its own contradictions that feed on themselves and take us deeper into the pit.”

She wants to defend the possibility of order, but on the street the sirens roar and blue lights bounce off puddles like lightning. Her words feel small against the world outside.

The noise fades. The rain intensifies to a steady hiss. Mark looks tired. His voice is thin. “Sometimes I think the only answer is to retreat. To turn off the feeds, disappear somewhere quiet. Let the gyre spin without me. People do this. They quit the city. They find somewhere quiet in the country. They escape. Or so they imagine.

“But in this age there is no escape. The world will find you in your offgrid hideout in the hills. It will find you on your organic farm, on your homestead. Your front gate does not keep out the world. Your ignoring the world does not stop it seeking you out. What was it the Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, said? ‘You might not be interested in war. But war is interested in you’? It will find you wherever you hide. The world is too connected for there to be retreat. Its tentacles will seek you out like fungi hyphae spreading quietly through the soil in search of nutrients.”

People stream past the cafe. They carry signs they no longer display and flags they no longer fly. The demonstration has ended. Miriam looks at the people. Some older, but most young or somewhere in middle age. They look happy despite whatever incident brought the police with sirens blaring and lights flashing. She thinks of the demonstration, of civilians in drone videos in war torn countries, of anonymous social media accounts orchestrating hate.

She shakes her head slowly. “If every thinking person withdraws, what’s left? The centre doesn’t rebuild itself. I keep wondering whether the centre is something external at all. Maybe it’s not political balance, not social values or the social system itself. Maybe it’s just people like us choosing to talk honestly when it’s easier to shout.”

They sit in silence. The waiter brings fresh cups and a slice of sticky baclava each, dripping with honey. The café is nearly empty now. Behind the counter the barista is cleaning the coffee machine. The couple at the corner table lean towards each other as if discussing something intimate, important or conspiratorial. Conspiratorial? Their conversation, the demonstration on the street, the subdued rainy mood of the evening have all collided to spin this veil of conspiracy over their table.

Mark regards Miriam across in the dimness of the cafe. There is warmth in her face. For the first time that night he smiles without irony. “Maybe that’s the only kind of truth left that we can build on. Maybe Yeats’ Second Coming isn’t something we wait for. Maybe it’s something we fight to prevent.”

The rain continues. Reflections run together on the glass. People scurry past. The cycle spins on. But inside the café two voices hold to their orbit… fragile, imperfect, human… against the darkness of the widening gyre.

Yeats: The Second Coming

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 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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