London has become my favorite city in the world, but Paris was the first outside of my native land where I spent any significant amount of time, and it retains a special hold on my imagination. The last time I was there was January — just a week after the Charlie Hebdo attacks… And now a day when an even deadlier set of attacks took even more lives. Over 150 reported as I write this.
And it’s even worse to see how today’s attack has already prompted this comment, about one of the world’s historic cities of refuge:
Not for the first time in a Remembrance Day week that’s seen so much rancor, the post-WWI poetry of W.B. Yeats comes to mind:
…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.
