The End Is Where We Start From

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.” 

T.S. Eliot excerpts from Little Gidding

 "We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."  T.S. Eliot Little Gidding.  

 Image source

 Image source

 O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,

And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away-

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing-

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

Extract from East Coker.
 Four Quartets T.S. Eliot

How to Build an Owl

1. Decide you must.
2. Develop deep respect for feather, bone, claw.
3. Place your trembling thumb where the heart will be: for one hundred hours watch so you will know where to put the first feather.
4. Stay awake forever. When the bird takes shape gently pry open its beak and whisper into it: mouse.
5. Let it go.

       Kathleen Lynch