Why I heart Heroes

Ultimately, Heroes is just a good tv show. It isn't transcending the medium or changing the way we live: it just shows up once a week and delivers some well produced, seriously entertaining, moving images. Really solid story telling. This week's Heroes ended with a intense montage narrated by the Yeats Poem "The Second Coming." I enjoyed the literary nod, and it really did deliver.

The poem has been used often in film, and because of the strong language it is a great tool to up the drama. I just love it. For the same reasons I love Heroes, big boldness. (That sort of sounds like a wsj wine review. Well, there you go. This poem would probably make a great Thanksgiving dinner accompanying Cab.)

"The Second Coming"

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center 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 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?

Seriously, guys. What rough beast will soon be upon us? Tell me!

And, while you are at it, check out Yeats. Kinda a cool guy.