From T S Eliot's "East Coker"
I chose an excerpt from East Coker (2nd of the Quartets ) because it's named after the place where T. S. is buried. A place I've not visited yet (I'm a member of the Dead Poet Society but that's one grave I've not collected -- yet!). Anyway, this is the very last part of the poem. * 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...