I am not widely read in poetry. But I was lucky enough to stumble on the poem "East Coker" by T. S. Eliot about 10 years ago. This is the last stanza of that poem. East Coker is one of 4 poems in the thin volume "Four Quartets". It was published when Eliot was 55. I think it was his last published work. Obviously he was reflective, looking backward more than forward at that age. If I had seen it at age 35 it would have been a ho-hum. Now it says everything I would say if I could say it.

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

And not the lifetime of one man only

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

There is a time for the evening under starlight,

A time for the evening under lamplight

(The evening with the photograph album).

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Four Quartets

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), April 25, 2000

Answers

Lars:

The four quartets is one of my favorite works by any author. Interestingly enough, Eliot had gone back to his roots in catholicism at this time in his life-somewhat of a non-sequiter, but it seems interesting to me.

I just qouted from this work recently, but only the line I could remember "If all time is eternally present, then all time is undredeemable".

Do you have a link to the work?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 25, 2000.

FS:

I looked, but the TS site that I use still hasn't posted the Four Quartets. It will come in the future, I guess.

Best wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), April 25, 2000.

FS,

Here is a link to East Coker. I found it in a Northern Lights search. I don't have links to the other poems in Four Quartets (Burnt Norton, East Gidding and Dry Salvages).\

LINK

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), April 25, 2000.

I didn't even notice that there are links to the other poems at the end of East Coker. I wonder what the strange alphabet is.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), April 25, 2000.

Thanks, Lars

Best wishes,,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), April 25, 2000.

Thanks for the Link:

April Sure has been the cruelest month in New Jersey!

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 25, 2000.

FS--

You fib; I am originally from NJ (Bergen County) and I remember the drama of azealas in bloom. We don't get many azealas in Indiana but Redbuds are just as beautiful.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), April 25, 2000.