Without Lifting A Finger

Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pines trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water (T S Eliot) Well, I haven't heard the drip-dropping yet (not sure Eliot even saw the hermit thrush) but I've seen him atop a magnolia tree and foraging under a tree for berries. Good enough for me, he's as cute as can be. And besides: Snowy's getting all the publicity thus far in 2023. Make a little room for this little guy. Drip drop.:) #rlswihart13 #happy2023 #huntingtonbeachca #urbanforest #thrushesofinstagram #hermitthrush #nature #poetry #beauty #smallbirds #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine 🇺🇦🥳

Rereading Conrad's Heart of Darkness and will perhaps go on to read more of his work. For starters: Amy Foster, Youth, Some Thoughts on his books which I believe he wrote later in life. Two famous "clips" (see T S Eliot and Apocalypse Now): He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: “‘The horror! The horror!’ “‘Mistah Kurtz—he dead.’

 If you came this way,  Taking any route, starting from anywhere,  At any time or at any season, It would always be the same: you would have to put off Sense and notion.  You are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity  Or carry report. You are here to kneel  Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more  Than an order of words, the conscious occupation  Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.  And what the dead had no speech for, when living,  They can tell you, being dead: the communication  Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.  Here, the intersection of the timeless moment  Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

 ‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion,’ says Eliot in words he has copied into his diary. ‘Poetry is not an expression of personality but an escape from personality.’ Then as a bitter afterthought Eliot adds: ‘But only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.’

     P.S. Have you seen Kierkegaard's Journals ? I've been reading it off and on for several months -- there are wonderful things in it and it's the first of his books I've been able to understand. And did you like the Four Quartets ?

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...

East Coker is the second poem of T. S. Eliot 's Four Quartets . It was started as a way for Eliot to get back into writing poetry and was modelled after Burnt Norton . It was finished during early 1940 and printed for the Easter edition of the 1940 New English Weekly . The title refers to a small community that was directly connected to Eliot's ancestry and was home to a church that was later to house Eliot's ashes. The poem discusses time and disorder within nature that is the result of humanity following only science and not the divine. Leaders are described as materialistic and unable to understand reality. The only way for mankind to find salvation is through pursuing the divine by looking inwards and realizing that humanity is interconnected. Only then can people understand the universe. [From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coker_(poem )]

Coming up T. S. You're not getting any younger. The portrait is by Wyndham Lewis. 

A few objective correlatives (more like subjective). :)             

Not good at memorizing poems, never have been. Not even my own. Still, the fragments that come back must be the bits that really stuck (even if they come back piecemeal and/or distorted). Was walking today and "Teach us to care and not to care" came flying back. Why? Well, that's another question to ponder. * Must be Eliot's month (Sept not April). * Ash Wednesday I Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?   Because I do not hope to know The infirm glory of the positive hour Because I do not think Because I know I shall not know The one veritable transitory power Because I cannot drink There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing ag...