The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned.
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war:
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

---

William Butler Yeats

From ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’ published in The Tower (1928)

I was just reading Fintan O’Tooles latest (isn’t he great?) called Democracy’s Afterlife and he reminded me of the existence of this poem.

As he rightly noted, when Yates is mentioned in relation to politics, it usually indicates a period of turmoil and division.

Still the poem is beautiful and powerful.

Ok, but the night is fraught enough, so I’ll leave you this impossible warm clip from Sesame Street.