December 17, 2010
Mohamed Bouazizi triggers The Jasmine Revolution, The Arab Spring— but long before, in many places, others had planted seeds
A year on
Protestors occupy Haymarket Square in nearby Norwich,
Occupy London stands by Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning.
Tomorrow
They go to court with The Bank of Ideas to defend the Right to Protest.
Prosaic footsteps to found real democracy
On the doorstep of the Mother of Parliaments
This morning
The Czech poet-politician Vaclav Havel died.
The Velvet Revolution softens his fall.
January 1919
William Butler Yeats writes his Second Coming:
‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre’
What a man of his times he was
With the War to End All Wars at his back
‘Surely some revelation is at hand’
Knowing more was yet to come
Meantime
Occupy Wall Street will not go away
As Americans of all ages get to grip with
Lawrence Lessig’s Lost Republic
Now
Is the time, our time, we are
The Ones We Waited For
We were always here
Steve Jobs just made it easier
For us to call upon one another
We bit the apple at our first beginnings
Now we eat it all as wisdom seeps
Out and seeds sprout new trees of Knowledge
We are all part of Life
We can do it
There is a hippy genius in each one of us
All the other animals are just waiting for us to catch up
As soon as possible
Before it’s too late for us anyway
Time is just a concept
We invented to make sense
Of the passage of infinity
18 December 2011