Glossary entry for
rough god

Van mailing list member David Di Sabatino suggests another possible interpretation, seeing a reference to the following poem - especially the last two lines - by W. B. Yeats: Ê

Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot see 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 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 binds
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?

• "Rough God Goes Riding" (on The Healing Game)
• "For Mr. Thomas" (on The Philosopher's Stone)

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