This may be an inauspicious opening post (which may double as a solitary post, alone in bewilderedness), but a combination of things prompt me to write. Insomnia; listening to Janeane Garofalo - Lou from the Santos campaign on the West Wing - hosting a radio show on Air America when I was in Philadelphia last week; the clamour that follows any opinion issued by a celebrity - regardless, or more properly, in spite of their absence of relevant professional expertise; and finding the following Yeats' poem:

On being asked for a War Poem

"I think it better that in times like these

A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth

We have no gift to set a statesman right;

He has had enough of medding who can please

A young girl in the indolence of her youth,

Or an old man upon a winter's night".