Lockdown, Yeats, Machado

Yesterday was the very definition of uncanny. Everything the same, everything different. I kept thinking of Yeats, “changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born.” Not my favorite of his works and not a parallel to Boston—almost the inverse. My wife and I live a block from the police station in Brighton, close to Watertown: like Yeats, “I have passed with a nod of the head / Or polite meaningless words” many officers who were on the scene last night. Now that we have been through all this, with a suspect in custody, and we consider what the next steps should be—public safety, civil rights, due process—these lines seem apt:Too long a sacrificeCan make a stone of the heart.O when may it suffice?Over the last few months I have been translating my way through Antonio Machado, and this morning I sat down with “La vida hoy tiene ritmo…” As is often the case with great writers, there were unexpected echoes in the poem. Thought I would share this (very) rough version of one stanza: The wind carries a dream of flowers.Young sap boils in new branches.Wings and fronds tremble,and the sagittal eye of the eaglecannot find its prey… dreaming fields shudderand the sun vibrates like a harp. 
Source:http://danpritch.blogspot.com/2013/04/lockdown-yeats-machado.html

Lockdown, Yeats, Machado Images