Upon Finding East Coker

'East Coker' By TS Eliot    (to read East Coker in its five parts, click the link to the left)

I.

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur, and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

  In my beginning is my end.  Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane... 

(from) IV. 

...Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and 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 empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Upon Finding East Coker

Here and now  is my beginning, not mattering

where I am or where I come from, my voice

of ash and cornstalk and leaf finds its ally.

With stones, this folly and forewarned failure

of words no longer tending that which once

tasted the palette of timelessness and seeing,

I return with those twenty years, also, that feel

wasted and yet not, steeping within which may,

just may resolve the quickened art of questions.

•

I will have this kind of conversation, however alone

it leaves me, But a lifetime burning in every moment

And not the lifetime of one man only 

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

 It is these stones that rise to meet me here, good company

yet uncompromising, as must be in folly, casting shadow

of experience haste and heavy and also humble.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

•

My day, this time, this world where I traverse and scold

as a private affair, the interior tides occasionally spilling

sometimes tarnishing, but also giving possibility to the polisher.

When should I, if ‘should I’ is the way to say it, when is it to be

plain, as uncontrived as animals coming to greet and pose

as themselves, not how we might wish them to present

only to fulfill matters that are ours, when is it to be plain?

Something is held back, reserved, calculated to create

a hidden reserve with interest, interest in and of what?

Let the dark come upon you, thus the beginning of the unraveling

and there are those who are with me here, in that here and there

that does not matter gives rise to exploration, communion,

even desolation ~ The sharp compassion of the healer’s art.

•

Thank you voice of voice recognized

Whether posing or not of one time and place

I find the ground of heart of heart synchronized

Mess of imprecision of feeling within this space

Fierce, monstrous, Love is most nearly itself, grace.

•

I’ve found something here of myself and of you

And found and lost again and again

It is that tarnish I now polish but seeing the hue

before the scour

For the pattern is new in every moment

And every moment is a new and shocking

Valuation of all we have been.

Having considered apology, I carry on

in my work of this day of words and all that I know little of.