The Republican Party

William Butler Yeats

Falling and falling into political lies

The leaders cannot hear the populace;

Things move apart; the centre cannot be;

Mere extremism is loosed upon the land,

Irrationality is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of true reason is drowned;

The best lack any air time, while the worst

Are full of corporate contributions.

Surely some catastrophe is at hand;

Surely the Republican Party is at hand.

The Republican Party! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Politicus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in fields of the heartland

A shape with human body and the head of a pin,

A brain blank and pitiless as a child,

Is moving its campaign, while all about it

Reel cameras of the indignant media pimps.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That double centuries of stable rule

Were vexed to nightmare by a foolish party,

And what dumb beast, her hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Washington to be born?