If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spentIf the unheard, unspokenWord is unspoken, unheard;Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard,The Word without a word, the Word withinThe world and for the world;And the light shone in the darkness andAgainst the Word the unstilled world still whirledAbout the center of the… Continue reading T.S. Eliot
Because I know that time is always timeAnd place is always and only placeAnd what is actual is actual only for one timeAnd only for one placeI rejoice that things are as they are andI renounce the blessèd faceAnd renounce the voiceBecause I cannot hope to turn againConsequently I rejoice, having to construct somethingUpon which… Continue reading T.S. Eliot
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. — T.S. Eliot, from “La Figlia che Piange,” quoted in The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse by Lyndall Gordon (Virago Press, 2022)
We die to each other daily.What we know of other peopleIs only our memory of the momentsDuring which we knew them. And they have changed since then.To pretend that they and we are the sameIs a useful and convenient social conventionWhich must sometimes broken. We must also rememberThat at every meeting we are meeting a… Continue reading T.S. Eliot
I should have been a pair of ragged clawsScuttling across the floors of silent seas. — T.S. Eliot, from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Prufrock and Other Observations. (Kessinger Publishing, LLC September 10, 2010) Originally published 1917.
Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not takeTowards the door we never openedInto the rose-garden. — T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” The Four Quartets. (Faber & Faber 1959) Originally published 1943.
What we call the beginning is often the endAnd to make and end is to make a beginning.The end is where we start from. — T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets. (Faber & Faber 1959) Originally published 1943.
Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable. — T.S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton,” The Four Quartets. (Faber & Faber 1959) Originally published 1943.
We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.Through the unknown, remembered gateWhen the last of earth left to discoverIs that which was the beginning;At the source of the longest riverThe voice of the hidden waterfallAnd the children in… Continue reading T.S. Eliot
In order to arrive at what you are not,you must go through the way in which you are not.And what you do not know is the only thing you know,and what you own is what you do not own,and where you are is where you are not. — T.S. Eliot, from “East Coker,” The Four… Continue reading T.S. Eliot
The Vale of Soul-Making 