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 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 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.
t.s eliot: 'east coker'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
i meet you again, straight out of evening. your smile a quiet betrayal of what i'm too tired to tell from within. today, i sketch and try to paint away what will come to revisit me. the senses tell of your returning. a past and longheld kindness i once touched, driving up, to seek me.
i imposed the distance. certain that i've stamped a clumsy closure to you. you tell of old words spoken from a house of stone. i remember the warm light in my room pursuing a darkness that waited on, for a distant dawn.
whenever i get lonesome, i look into my heart. i can always and still, find you hanging out there. i have never forgotten. sometimes when i am feeling sad, or just downright despondent, i think of you placing your hands upon my head and blessing me. it always helps. always. you are right about memories. every letter becomes a flight of words i once learnt to sail on.
i become a stranger to my instincts.
no more wish to begin journeys with you.
----------------------------
