Wednesday, November 9, 2011

"A lifetime burning in every moment"


"[....] So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years [...]
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. [....]

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment."
Eliot, T. S. "Four Quartets." The complete poems and plays. London: Faber, 1969. 182.

4 comments:

  1. Lost mine a couple of years ago. I get it (inasmuch as anyone can) - funny how grief changes, but is always there. Like a small pebble you carry around.

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  2. Thinking about you.

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  3. small pebble that morphs into a huge sharp boulder with lots of random jagged edges or a moderately sized slab that slowly pushes you down. The days when it's just a pebble are pretty awesome. Those other days.........

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